Basically the sponsoring company starts paying a developer to start hacking a submit patches. Eventually he should rise through the meritocracy and become a committer. Given the current level of activity on ESME and assuming the developer is decent that shouldn't take long. I don't think ASF does anything special with regards to sponsorship other than provide a neutral ground for contributions and a framework that I think can make corporations feel a little more comfortable with the idea of letting their IP go out the door.
On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Anne Kathrine Petteroe <[email protected]>wrote: > I have a question for Erik. > > In a comment on David's post you say: > "I just don't see the path, other than perhaps Siemens, SAP, or some other > sponsor paying people to write the code. Which, of course, would fit with > other ASF projects." > > How does this sponsorship work? > Does ASF have projects which are commercial open source? > > /Anne > > > On 3. mai. 2009, at 11.25, Richard Hirsch wrote: > > I agree with Vassil in that the main issue deals with the creation of >> exceptional open-source code and the different ways to build the community >> to support such code. Much of the debate revolving around the ASF concerns >> unspoken expectations - what should / can ASF provide emerging projects. >> As >> Gianugo puts it >> >> The actual community building is however a task for the project itself: >>> the >>> ASF isn't Midas and won't be able to >>> turn an unattractive project into sexy stuff that gathers time and >>> enthusiasm from volunteers. >>> >> >> >> IMHO, the ASF provides the structure - based on years of experience - and >> infrastructure to support such communities. I >> think all open-source projects want to succeed. There is always some >> hidden >> hope that the ASF's Midas touch will lead to a stream of new developers >> contributing to this success. I think in the ASF the focus is on doing >> things the "Apache" way as a means of creating this community. Although >> ASF >> can provide guidance based upon what has been successful in other Apache >> projects, it can't be expected to do the grunt work for all its projects. >> We could expect more "lessons learned" from other ASF projects coming from >> the mentors but the actual application of these ideas has to come from us. >> >> Speaking of grunt work, we should probably be considering what to do about >> the necessity of rewriting the ESME codebase as David and Erik describe. >> We >> can have the best wiki in the ASF but ESME is a software project and >> without >> a solid code base we aren't going to get very far. >> >> D. >> >> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Vassil Dichev <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> Without trying to get into David's mind, I'd like to point out that >>> David's blog post was more of a reaction to defend the Rails >>> community. I must say it's possible to get the point across even >>> without the unfortunate comparison with the ASF. The point is this: >>> it's hard writing exceptional software. I think you both agree on one >>> count: even guidance and support don't guarantee a groundbreaking >>> software project. If success was easy to reproduce, someone would have >>> discovered a way of generating groundbreaking software projects on a >>> mass scale. >>> >>> Now I don't think that a software project has to be groundbreaking to >>> be useful. I have no illusions that ESME is destined to be as >>> groundbreaking as e.g. Rails. I still hope it has the chance to be >>> useful. >>> >>> With that said, I hope that any heated arguments originating from the >>> Rails scandal are over soon, because there are probably no two people >>> who agree on which software is useful or groundbreaking. And the time >>> and effort spent in a discussion like this could be spent creating >>> software. >>> >>> Vassil >>> >>> > -- http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/
