RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
I like the page for PostGIS Raster coordinating the roadmap and funding/dev.time [1]. Regarding a tool/site, I haven't seen one that would personally inspire me to donate, or help me convince my company to donate. They feel disconnected from the project itself, and honestly they give this image of impersonal, bank-ish approach. Also, the money raised seems to indicate poor success rates. I feel that for a project, in my particular case, the easiest way to have a positive funding decision in the company I work for would be: 1) Receive a letter from OSGeo/Project campaign to raise funds, stating a few facts of life in FOSS development, and pointing out the benefits of the model to all users/community, ending with an emphasis on community efforts where everyone has its role (users/companies and developers/project stewards/osgeo). To make things even easier to stakeholders present a few common donation values... (you know, like a checkbox list ;) 2) Allow for optionally directing donated funds to available roadmap features or existing bugs (not sure how this would work out in several scenarios, like when minimum funding is never reached...) 3) Have a project page where we can see how funding is working, progress is made, who is donating, etc. (similar to [1]), but this is a plus, and not really a requirement. But it would be nice to be informed of any progress done to the selected features/bugs when/if it happened I can see this approach working in different organizations around here. And in a periodical basis. Just my 2 cents... Duarte [1] - http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/WKTRaster/PlanningAndFunding De: Duarte Carreira [mailto:dcarre...@edia.pt] Enviada: sexta-feira, 3 de Junho de 2011 10:55 Para: OSGeo Discussions Assunto: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects? Have there been any discussions about ways of raising funds for projects under the OSGeo umbrella? For instance, annual fund raising campaigns like Wikipedia does? Or letters/emails asking for donations to known significant users as associations sometimes do? Or using sites specialized in linking users requests to developers? I suppose this is to be done by each project individually... What are the current opinions? Regards, Duarte ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
Il 06/06/2011 11:28, Duarte Carreira ha scritto: I like the page for PostGIS Raster coordinating the roadmap and funding/dev.time [1]. Regarding a tool/site, I haven’t seen one that would personally inspire me to donate, or help me convince my company to donate. They feel disconnected from the project itself, and honestly they give this image of impersonal, bank-ish approach. Also, the money raised seems to indicate poor success rates. I feel that for a project, in my particular case, the easiest way to have a positive funding decision in the company I work for would be: 1) Receive a letter from OSGeo/Project campaign to raise funds, stating a few facts of life in FOSS development, and pointing out the benefits of the model to all users/community, ending with an emphasis on community efforts where everyone has its role (users/companies and developers/project stewards/osgeo). To make things even easier to “stakeholders” present a few “common” donation values… (you know, like a checkbox list ;) 2) Allow for optionally directing donated funds to available roadmap features or existing bugs (not sure how this would work out in several scenarios, like when minimum funding is never reached…) 3) Have a project page where we can see how funding is working, progress is made, who is donating, etc. (similar to [1]), but this is a plus, and not really a requirement. But it would be nice to be informed of any progress done to the selected features/bugs when/if it happened OK, sounds reasonable. One problem is: how do we collect the addresses? We do not want to spam around. Also, please consider that in the past we have sent letters to all companies listed in the support page, and we received very few responses (none of them positive). So, it's a difficult path after all. For now, the only very successful approach has been for more mature institutions to hire directly one developer or a company (this is how much of the work on QGIS is funded anyway). Our bug squashing initiative[0] has met a reasonable success, and IMHO we should build on that. Suggestions welcome. -- Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc [0]http://www.qgis.org/wiki/Bugs ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
Paolo, I did not know of your past efforts mailing letters. Maybe there are lessons there that would allow us to improve the process and be more successful. Or it is really a dead-end. I don't know for sure. But if 1 letter gave way to a single 500€ donation it would be 45% of all funding in the bug squashing initiative page (I'm excluding Faunalia's own donation). So maybe even with a small percentage of success it could be very effective. As to how to create a list of users, there are a number of alternatives. Of course, we will never have a complete list, and maybe will include a few non-users ;) but it is feasible. Look at conferences, and email lists, and personal contacts, and so on. Ask in the letter itself for other users that might be willing or using that same project/product. You know, use the community. I'm not a marketeer but I think there is something here that could be very positive. Regards, Duarte -Mensagem original- De: Paolo Cavallini [mailto:cavall...@faunalia.it] Enviada: segunda-feira, 6 de Junho de 2011 11:12 Para: discuss@lists.osgeo.org Assunto: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects? Il 06/06/2011 11:28, Duarte Carreira ha scritto: I like the page for PostGIS Raster coordinating the roadmap and funding/dev.time [1]. Regarding a tool/site, I haven’t seen one that would personally inspire me to donate, or help me convince my company to donate. They feel disconnected from the project itself, and honestly they give this image of impersonal, bank-ish approach. Also, the money raised seems to indicate poor success rates. I feel that for a project, in my particular case, the easiest way to have a positive funding decision in the company I work for would be: 1) Receive a letter from OSGeo/Project campaign to raise funds, stating a few facts of life in FOSS development, and pointing out the benefits of the model to all users/community, ending with an emphasis on community efforts where everyone has its role (users/companies and developers/project stewards/osgeo). To make things even easier to “stakeholders” present a few “common” donation values… (you know, like a checkbox list ;) 2) Allow for optionally directing donated funds to available roadmap features or existing bugs (not sure how this would work out in several scenarios, like when minimum funding is never reached…) 3) Have a project page where we can see how funding is working, progress is made, who is donating, etc. (similar to [1]), but this is a plus, and not really a requirement. But it would be nice to be informed of any progress done to the selected features/bugs when/if it happened OK, sounds reasonable. One problem is: how do we collect the addresses? We do not want to spam around. Also, please consider that in the past we have sent letters to all companies listed in the support page, and we received very few responses (none of them positive). So, it's a difficult path after all. For now, the only very successful approach has been for more mature institutions to hire directly one developer or a company (this is how much of the work on QGIS is funded anyway). Our bug squashing initiative[0] has met a reasonable success, and IMHO we should build on that. Suggestions welcome. -- Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc [0]http://www.qgis.org/wiki/Bugs ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
Il 06/06/2011 12:24, Duarte Carreira ha scritto: I did not know of your past efforts mailing letters. Maybe there are lessons there that would allow us to improve the process and be more successful. Or it is really a dead-end. I don't know for sure. But if 1 letter gave way to a single 500€ donation it would be 45% of all funding in the bug squashing initiative page (I'm excluding Faunalia's own donation). So maybe even with a small percentage of success it could be very effective. In that case it has been a dead end. Please note: it was addressed at the companies listed in the support page, not at the institutions using QGIS. All the best. -- Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Duarte Carreira dcarre...@edia.pt wrote: Have there been any discussions about ways of raising funds for projects under the OSGeo umbrella? For instance, annual fund raising campaigns like Wikipedia does? Or letters/emails asking for donations to known “significant” users as associations sometimes do? Or using sites specialized in linking users requests to developers? I suppose this is to be done by each project individually… A relevant group are the institutional sponsors (companies, agencies and so on). To better address the small donations I once started http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Microdonations which is based on ideas from Paolo Cavallini. Recently it has been picked up again. Several OSGeo projects have their own donation page (see above WIki page) but for sure more could be done. Markus -- http://gis.cri.fmach.it/neteler/ http://grass.osgeo.org/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
Il 03/06/2011 13:40, Markus Neteler ha scritto: A relevant group are the institutional sponsors (companies, agencies and so on). To better address the small donations I once started http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Microdonations which is based on ideas from Paolo Cavallini. Recently it has been picked up again. Several OSGeo projects have their own donation page (see above WIki page) but for sure more could be done. Yes; it would be great to have a joint effort (we all have limited time to deal with these issues); a few years ago I asked OSGeo, but the foundation did not seem interested in this (and taking 25% from donations did not make it an attractive option, honestly). I would be interested in exploting any option. All the best. -- Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?
There are discussions; but they also feature how to raise funds for the foundation to keep the doors open and the lights on etc... Fundraising ideas are always welcome however. Jody On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 7:55 PM, Duarte Carreira dcarre...@edia.pt wrote: Have there been any discussions about ways of raising funds for projects under the OSGeo umbrella? For instance, annual fund raising campaigns like Wikipedia does? Or letters/emails asking for donations to known “significant” users as associations sometimes do? Or using sites specialized in linking users requests to developers? I suppose this is to be done by each project individually… What are the current opinions? Regards, Duarte ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
