Chris, I'm very supportive of the Open Source Sponsorship concept for all the reasons you have mentioned. In fact, I blogged on the topic a while back, including reference to Openlayers' relationship with Metacarta (which I hope I've described accurately) http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2008/06/effective-open-source-sponsorship-many.html
While I think that sponsorship is achievable, I expect it will be more challenging to source $$ than via the standard pay per feature business model. It also might be worth revisiting who controls the project. When I was discussing the project sponsorship model with potential Open Source sponsors in Australian government, there was a strong desire for the sponsors to have representation on the Project Steering Committees of the projects they were interested in. Christopher Schmidt wrote: > On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 08:47:51PM +0200, Kristian Thy wrote: > >> On Sun, Oct 12, Christopher Schmidt wrote: >> >>> I hesitate to provide sponsors direct control over the usage of funds. >>> The reason for this is simply that I would prefer to not be 'beholden' >>> to the sponsors for how we use funds directly. >>> >> Organizations with specific needs can still pay developers consulting >> fees to fix their problems. >> > > Sure. > > >> Indeed, short of having money in surplus and no specific needs (i.e. for >> reasons of altruism) I fail to see why I, as a corporation, would give >> money through OSGeo instead of just paying someone to scratch my itch >> directly (you know how just rubbing your back through your t-shirt is >> never quite satisfactory?). >> > > Scratching specific itches is beneficial for when you have a specific > itch. However, the success of OpenLayers as a project can achieve more > than that: things that you would have never thought that you'd need > scratched might get done. Things like better memory management, better > speed (fewer CPU cycles), improved documentation all allow for the > project as a whole to succeed in ways that few specific organizations > have a strong individual desire for, but a more general fund might build > up enough support for that they get priority. > > Additionally, although there are a large number of OpenLayers > consultants of all shapes and sizes, the number of people who are core > developers in the project is relatively small. With funds being managed > by the project directly, those developers are likely to play a key role > in the design and implementation of plans that are paid for by > sponsorship funds -- and that kind of difference can make the difference > between a great patch for you and a great patch for the project. (I've > seen enough good designs come out of the OpenLayers development team > that I'd generally say that stuff which is worked on by the core > developers will always be of a relatively high quality compared to > individual contributors.) Since most of the core contributors to the > project work for organizations where their consulting time is unlikely > to be something you can get ahold of trivially, giving money to the > project directly might have a more direct correlation on improvement of > the project. > > Another thing is that there are many organizations which based a fair > amount of their success upon the success of the OpenLayers project. For > example, the Ordnance Survey Open Space project depends critically on > OpenLayers, since a large part of their product is simply OpenLayers > with some additional configuration wrapped up into it. With that being > the case, though OSOS doesn't have any specific needs from the OL > project (or at least, we aren't aware of them), they still depend on > openLayers continuing to succeed as a project -- supporting new browsers > as they come out, improving upon things which might be bugs, etc. > Organizations like this may not have any specific itch to scratch, but > also don't have the resources to replace OpenLayers should the project > fail, so it may be in their best interests to support the project > monetarily to ensure continued community success. > > By acting as a sponsor, organizations also get to use this fact in their > marketing materials. In the same way that purchasing a sponsorship slot > at a conference gets your name and logo in a prominent place in > conference materials, purchasing a sponsorship for OpenLayers gets your > name and logo in what may be a prominent place on our website/in our > marketing materials. It means that people can recognize that your > organization directly supports the OpenLayers project. to some extent, > some of MetaCarta's efforts in OpenLayers as a contributor to the > project can be seen as a marketing cost: a full one third of the search > results for MetaCarta on Google are tied directly to the OpenLayers > project. (32,100 out of 102,000) When I meet people at a conference, the > thing I usually hear isn't "MetaCarta... you guys are the search engine > company, right?" It's "MetaCarta: You guys do OpenLayers!" Sponsorship > allows for organizations which don't have the same level of developer > resources to get the same kind of participation in a project that they > support. > > Lastly, I expect that any sponsors will get more control over future > direction of the project via their feedback than people who aren't > directly suppoting the project. Certainly, my current answer to most > questions about "When will feature $x be done?" Are "When you write a > patch for it." However, given sponsorship, I think that there is a > chance that features that a large enough number of sponsors are in favor > of to be given priority -- and if developers still aren't interested, we > have cash that might be able to be thrown at the project. And In the > same way that I'm more likely to spend time helping someone who has > demonstrated the ability to help themselves -- by patching code, > offering documentation, or simply contributing to the mailing list -- > I expect there is a certain level of credit you get for being a project > sponsor that will indirectly improve the communications you get from > developers when you have questions. > > In conclusion, (hm, 5th grade essay time!) Sponsorship offers a number of > benefits to the sponsor in a more indirect way than scratching an itch. > By collaborating with other sponsors, tasks which are too large for one > organization to support directly can be undertaken and core developers are > more likely to be involved in developments. Sponsoring helps ensure > the success of the project as a whole -- impotant for organizations > which depend critically on OpenLayers. Sponsoring has a certain > marketing appeal, and can help to popularize supporters of the > OpenLayers project even if they can't contribute developmetn resources > directly, and sponsorship helps to allow for the determination of future > direction by providing a direct pipeline to the project steering > committee for sponsors to offer project direction feedback. > > All in all, for many organizations these benefits are probably worth the > $3k that they get out of it. In fact, many organizations sponsor OSGeo > with far fewer reasons. OSGeo sponsorship does not get you any direct > control/benefit from any OSGeo project -- just your name on a web page/ > marketing materials. But there are a number of OSGeo sponsors: > http://www.osgeo.org/content/sponsorship/sponsors.html who do it > primarily for the encouragement/maintainance of the OSGeo community. > Some might well simply describe this as 'altruism', but I think that if > you were to ask Frank Warmardam, what he would say is that you are > ensuring the future stability of a community of developers who have > helped you in the past. Combined with a little bit of altruism, such > things can go a long way :) > > >> That said, Chris, I still think it's good idea, and I have probably >> overlooked something that makes it more attractive. Edumacate me :) >> > > I don't know if I did so successfully, but i've just laid out the pitch > I plan to use on people who I want to be sponsors, if the PSC decides to > go this route: I'd love to hear whether you (or anyone else) thinks the > above reasons are convincing :) > > Regards, > -- Cameron Shorter Geospatial Systems Architect Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050 Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254 Think Globally, Fix Locally Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source http://www.lisasoft.com _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list [email protected] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
