In the hopes of having these details included in Ben & Kathy's report:
- Should the Evergreen Community have a membership fee structure as a way of getting funds for pooling? What are the benefits of membership? Equinox's idea lab a potential model? Should there be a tiered model of membership, higher the tier the greater the benefits?
I am generally in favor of a membership structure for the purposes of building funds for pooled development projects, and even having various "tiers" seems like a great idea - those who contribute more can and should be recognized. But I want to take this opportunity to say that I'm very dubious of a tiered _benefits_ model insofar as it influences the direction of development, access to developers, test environments, etc. Obviously the larger community entities and those who are able to contribute to shared funding projects (like GPLS's huge commitment to the web based staff client) are already receiving these sorts of benefits - which makes sense - but I'm concerned that formalizing these sorts of things as explicit perks given to membership tiers could fundamentally change the nature of our project. I'm afraid that we may end up making development 100% "customer driven" rather than what I see (currently) as a nice balance between "customer driven", "community driven", and "own-itch-scratching".
Justin
