Howard Butler wrote:
Open source software works because people acting in their own self interest have the auxiliary benefit of helping everyone in the project. Report your pet bug, file a patch, add a new feature -- all of these things immediately help you, but ultimately help the project. This activity also imparts tangential benefits that are very hard to quantify but can be clearly important like personal visibility, credibility, and status.
... > I think it is time we take a step back and attempt to
quantify what the return on that investment has been. What has the existence of OSGeo enabled that could not have happened otherwise?
Howard, I would claim that the benefits of OSGeo are quite hard to quantify. But hopefully we can at least identify some qualitative improvements. From my perspective the more obvious benefits are: 1) I was able to launch a GDAL/OGR sponsorship program that is fairly credible to corporate entities (ie. it doesn't just look like me feather-bedding), and we were able to turn that funding around to fund a maintainer role. 2) We have some organization around selecting conference venues, and this process has (I think) resulted in multiple credible host candidates putting the conference on a more even keel. 3) We have dependable project infrastructure for those that want to use it. I'd add that this "shared hosting" effort has had a substantial benefit for GDAL/OGR (and I think MapServer, OSSIM, etc) of encouraging the use of better tools (trac/svn vs. bugzilla/cvs) that might not have happened if the projects were still on their own. There are some less tangible benefits, but I find there are many and it is hard for me to decide which are significant and which are in my own head.
What is the elevator pitch, one-sentence value proposition to a
> potential sponsor of OSGeo? My "short pitch" to existing users of open source geospatial software is that they need to find ways of supporting and fostering the community that makes and improves the software they use. That some modest effort in this direction keeps the "factory" working, and provides them with credibility when they need something. Depending on the organization this pitch might lead to in-kind support, project specific sponsorship or sponsorship for OSGeo as a whole. With consulting companies working in the field, I would emphasize that having some profile as a project and community supporter is important to clients when they are selecting a service vendor. The inverse of the above, is that if we want OSGeo sponsors on this sort of basis we need to demonstrate that sponsorship of OSGeo actually helps the projects and that such sponsorship actually produces a higher profile for the sponsors. > What is the concrete return on sweat equity that a volunteer
within OSGeo can expect to earn? We need to think about structural issues OSGeo might have that hinder our ability to model the Open Source symbiosis described in the first paragraphs of this email for those with financial resources or those willing to swing an ax or two.
This I will need to think on this. I'd like to think the web site spotlights, the Sol Katz award, and "fancy OSGeo titles" provide a little visibility/credibility/status juice but clearly the feedback loop for participating in the "incubation committee" for instance isn't going to be as tight as implementing a new software feature you can use right away. Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
