On Sat, Nov 04, 2017 at 06:09:36PM +0000, C R wrote: > Hey all. As requested of me at the board meeting, I've typed up a > "common sense" draft of what I think is in-line with the project's > purpose and goals. > > I thought about all the ways I could think of that a sponsor could > make the project look bad with their actions, so here's the result:
This looks like a great start for the conversation, thanks for putting it together so quickly! > Sponsorship Requirements: > > The Inkscape project was founded to serve a world-wide community of > artists, hobbyists, designers, scientists, engineers, and people > everywhere by providing free and open source software (FLOSS) tools > for vector graphics production. Since our sponsorship offerings > include the service of exposure on our website, we require that all > sponsors meet the following criteria to ensure a mutual compatibility > with the spirit of the Inkscape Project. Thus to qualify for > sponsorship, a sponsor must be: > > > 1. A Legal, Law-Abiding Business - Must be registered as a business, > pay taxes, and maintain a good standing with their customer base, and > the country(s) in which they do business. > > 2. Politically Neutral - Our community is vast, and serves users from > all walks of life and political views. The Inkscape Project does not, > and therefore must not be seen to support one any particular ideology > (beyond that of our belief in the essential software freedoms), and > thus can not accept support from organisations of a political or > religious nature. The limitation on companies involved with political advocacy is a good one; it fits with our requirements from Conservancy that we not engage in any politics. I don't think we need to exclude religious organizations though. Hospitals, universities, etc. sometimes are religion-affiliated but I don't think we want to automatically turn them away as sponsors if they were interested. > 3. Supportive of User Freedoms - A sponsor must not have a history of > abusing user freedoms. Yeah, this is one we've wondered about in the past. We should do more thinking on these lines. > This includes the sale of and promotion of > proprietary software as part of the sponsor's core business, which we > consider incompatible with the project's goals of user freedom. Boy, this might be tough. A lot of companies (my own employer included) have feet in both free and proprietary camps. I suspect a lot of potential sponsors will have kind of mixed records here, and it might get kind of tricky to judge. Even Microsoft, bad as they've been historically, do a huge amount in the open source field. > 4. Supportive of the Environment and the Future - The Inkscape Project > can not accept donations from companies which promote the destruction > of the environment. This includes companies which fund climate change > denialism, anti-science groups, and members of the tobacco and fossil > fuel industries. Martin's got a good point that a lot of corporations have environmental issues associated with them, so this one may hit a bit too broadly. Funding climate change denialism probably is adequately covered by the politically neutral requirement. Does anyone know if other open source projects have requirements regarding industries they don't accept sponsorship from? If we decide we want to go that route, it might be useful to see how they word it and which industries they exclude. > 5. Supportive of Equal Rights, Free Speech and Gender Equality - A > sponsor must not fund groups which seek to deny the rights and > freedoms of others based on gender, race, creed, religion (or lack > thereof), or sexual preference. > > If a sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential > compatibility points, the Inkscape Project reserves the right to pull > the sponsor from our website, at which point a prorated refund of the > donation amount will be returned to the sponsor. I'd revise this last bit to: "If a prospective sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project will unfortunately need to decline the offer of sponsorship." We'll be making the judgment on the sponsor using these requirements prior to them signing up. Once the sponsor has landed I doubt we'll be giving them much more attention. Thanks again for putting this together! Bryce ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Inkscape-board mailing list Inkscape-board@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-board
