PSC Vote: Budget revision 2025

Fri Jan 3 18:32:19 PST 2025

I’ve added a line item in there for General In-kind support and what I consider the hours based on the volunteer time I devote to those things multiplied by the extra people I know work on those things.

The mailman piece I honestly don’t know how much moderation that takes, probably varies based on project. On postgis side moderation required is pretty low, then again postgis-users /developers is pretty low traffic too.

e.g. the Mantra moderation I put at ~90 hrs

cause I think I spend about 5 minutes per day on that and I know that Lnicola and Angelos spend at least as much time as I do on it, and that I don’t put under my contract.

The discourse I put at 25 hrs, cause I think every other day I scan the general etc, to see if someone posted to general instead of a more appropriate category and to approve/reject posts that got caught by suspected spam word filters.

I think there are at least another 3 or so people that do that too so I think our total for the year would be 25 hrs or more.  I expect that to increase overtime and improvement in our mail server and other spam upgrades to discourse to help with that.

Regarding your line item to redo the “OSGeo UserID Creation” form.  What did you have in mind for that?

My annoyance is still too many people are asking for mantras that don’t need them and those accounts languish.

I’d like to reduce that especially until we upgrade our LDAP and institute account name length,  expiration, and password policies

Thanks,

Regina 

From: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> 
Sent: Friday, January 3, 2025 8:29 PM
To: Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us>
Cc: System Administration Committee Discussion/OSGeo <sac at lists.osgeo.org>; Sandro Santilli <strk at kbt.io>
Subject: Re: PSC Vote: Budget revision 2025

I should probably grab a new discussion thread (sorry).

Here is an example from the marketing committee <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Marketing_Committee_Budget_2025> , outlining a goal and what part requires financing and what part we are dependent on community in-kind input. It also outlines a task requiring collaboration with the SAC committee.

For SAC moderation of discourse presently is done by volunteers. It is part of the operating effort required to host the forums. Sometimes this can be met with funding, sometimes it can be met with police (example requiring project leads to volunteer as moderators).

Because OSGeo infrastructure is not generally visible it is hard to include sponsors in these activities. It is worth stating that clearly in the budget - that it is a choice SAC is making. Still if there are specific initiatives (such as migrating to forums, or usability improvements) that could benefit from sponsorship; and you have a way to recognize sponsors over the course of the activity - make sure to ask for sponsorship.

Please share your ideas about recognizing in-kind contributions of companies with the board, if you review recent meeting minuets <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2024-12-01#OSGeo_finances>  ideas on how to better resource OSGeo are being collected.

- -

Jody Garnett

On Jan 3, 2025 at 5:04:09 PM, Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us <mailto:lr at pcorp.us> > wrote:

Jody,

Not following what you mean by these two.

Item 1: Items that can be used by board to limit scope?  How would we detail that exactly. 

I think at a certain point you end up spending more time itemizing things, which takes time away from actually doing things.

Like I think all the SysAdmin stuff we itemized needs to be done eventually, sure we can keep pushing things down the road, but things will eventually blow up.

Sure we can not pay hosting fees to OSUOSL and sure they won’t kick us out, but I think that just makes us jerks.

Item 2: What are in-kind contributions from the SAC committee?  Is that like time volunteered that could be used as sponsorship instead of money?

e.g. if my company Paragon were to pay for my SAC time, would that constitute the equivalent of sponsorship and Paragon would be listed as a sponsor on osgeo.org <http://osgeo.org>  site like other sponsors?

I actually like that idea and I think something we should do for others who do volunteer a lot of the their time to OSGeo and such time is under-appreciated, because we never put a price tag on those things.

I presume for the other “opportunities for participation”, you are thinking providing more detail as Json had mentioned of where he would serve best and how can we utilize his services?

That piece I honestly haven’t given much thought to.  I’d rather leave that to other people to decide for themselves, as many have e.g. you volunteered to administer discourse, website administration, and repo.osgeo.org <http://repo.osgeo.org>  and that has been helpful.

Jsanz does a lot of the mailing list stuff.

>From my point of view, I’m more concerned with having 3 people who are familiar enough with our infra that they can backup each other. Building that level of trust takes time so I wouldn’t leave that up to casual volunteering.

That is ultimately not a nice to have, but a must have if we are to stay afloat.

Thanks,

Regina

From: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com <mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com> > 
Sent: Friday, January 3, 2025 4:43 PM
To: Sandro Santilli <strk at kbt.io <mailto:strk at kbt.io> >
Cc: Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us <mailto:lr at pcorp.us> >; System Administration Committee Discussion/OSGeo <sac at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:sac at lists.osgeo.org> >
Subject: Re: PSC Vote: Budget revision 2025

+0 for me

The budget succeeds in communicating expectations - but does not provide information to guide planning.

1.	As an example line items that can be used by board to limit scope; to understand what it is possible to give up to reduce costs. Or line items that could be added to improve usability.
2.	The wiki page could do a better job of capturing in-kind contributions of time from the SAC committee; or opportunities for participation (if our service providers wish to volunteer in-kind or financial support)

- -

Jody Garnett

On Jan 3, 2025 at 7:01:51 AM, Sandro Santilli <strk at kbt.io <mailto:strk at kbt.io> > wrote:

+1 from me, thanks Regina. Happy 2025 everyone!

Il 19 dicembre 2024 21:18:49 CET, Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us <mailto:lr at pcorp.us> > ha scritto:

I've added one more line item to the SysAdmin budget -- contract to upgrade

MailMan and any unforeseen issues.

I figure  we should ask for it now so we don't have to request for it when

it's too late.  We will probably be turned down anyway.

I ask everyone to vote again and I will send to board for approval after.

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Budget#2025

+1 from me

-- 
Sent from hand-held device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/sac/attachments/20250103/c5b5e5e5/attachment-0001.htm>