Hi all, I am working on the Jenkins donations page <https://jenkins.io/donate/> update at the moment (INFRA-2396 <https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/INFRA-2396>), and I would like to propose some changes there so that we can have a funding source once SPI retires the Jenkins donations as a part of our transition to CDF. Jenkins funding helps us to run outreach programs and to cover some infrastructure costs, and as a board member I think it is really important to keep it running and, ideally, to facilitate funding and using the money in the project.
*TL:DR:* Let's use CommunityBridge <https://funding.communitybridge.org/> as a SPI replacement to raise funds. It is maintained by Linux Foundation, and it is recommended for all projects within LF or sub-foundations like CDF. Examples: CHAOSS <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/chaoss>, Manjaro <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/manjaro> or KiCAD <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/06d36004-70a3-4f1f-8ae3-d0b2dd98815d> *Background.* Jenkins project operates thanks to contributions and sponsorship (infra, meetups, swag, etc, etc.). Historically we did not have high cash flows in the project, we mostly spend money on infra and on outreach programs (swag, travel grants, Outreachy and Community Bridge in 2019). Sponsorship covered the most of our "big" expenses (e.g. Azure, meetup.com, contributor summits, etc.), but there is a tendency to formalize such donations through CDF. Currently sponsorship through CDF is a lengthy process not suitable for small donations, and it would be great to have a simple process so that we can raise money to facilitate the changes in the project. *Current state* - https://jenkins.io/donate/ documents the donations policy. - This page has not been updated for a while, working on it - This page basically designates donations to be consumed for Jenkins Infra, - There is an explicit statement that "Your contribution is not used for paying personnel.". Arguably, this is what we do for Outreachy and CommunityBridge though stipend for outreach projects != salary - Jenkins uses SPI to accept donations. Soon SPI will no longer accept donations to Jenkins due as a part of the transition to CDF. The exact date is TBD, but the decision has been already made in Spring 2019 as communicated by Tracy Miranda - We also accept donations through ffis.de, but the status is unknown ( WEBSITE-703 <https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/WEBSITE-703> tracks the investigation). It is also not clear whether they have Jenkins money on their accounts and how to access them - CommunityBridge Funding site <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/jenkins> is enabled for mentorship donations only as a part of Governance Meeting decisions in July 2019). We used it to dry-run the JCasC Dev Tools project <https://jenkins.io/projects/jcasc/dev-tools/> this year, and it works pretty well (except the SPI => LF transfer part which was the major obstacle for the mentee payments). *Suggested changes* - Update "Your contribution is not used for paying personnel " to be explicit that the Jenkins project might use money to sponsor limited-term work on the project: outreach initiatives, addressing mission-critical topics (e.g. INFRA needs) or facilitating projects required for the Jenkins future' (e.g. JCasC, Cloud Native Jenkins, etc.) - All such projects will need to be approved by the Governance meeting - The payments should be limited to reasonable amounts so that it is "facilitating contributions / mentorship" but not a fully-paid job. E.g. GSoC stipends <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/student-stipends> could be used as a reference - Enable CommunityBridge-based sponsorship for all available categories: Development, Marketing, Meetups, Bug Bounty, Travel and Documentation. We update documentation to mark it as a default donations way. - It will enable organization payments and also small monthly donations by individuals in the Patreon style. E.g. see CHAOSS <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/chaoss>, Manjaro <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/manjaro> or KiCAD <https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/06d36004-70a3-4f1f-8ae3-d0b2dd98815d> - As a risk for this plan, Core Infrastructure Initiative <https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/> certification is expected for projects on Community Bridge in long term. I got clarification from Linux Foundation that it is not a blocker at the moment. See INFRA-2396 <https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/INFRA-2396> for the context - CommunityBridge allows donations to be designated to particular areas so that donors can decide what they sponsor - In the future I would suggest to allow targeted sponsoring of big changes as outreach projects. It is way of the scope for this thread, so I will create a follow-up once I am ready - Mark SPI-based donations as deprecated. Even if they continue to work, reimbursements from SPI and transferring money from SPI to Linux Foundation is a lengthy process due to the SPI activist-driven model. SPI helped the project A LOT, but the payments experience should improve since Linux Foundation has full-time employees responsible for payments - Investigate the status of ffis.de and update the documentation accordingly. Mark as deprecated in the case of doubt This proposal does not include raising visibility of the donations page. But we can definitely do it once the new flow is set up and battle-tested. If there is a consensus and approval at the next governance meeting, I will proceed by setting up a PoC and creating a JEP draft for funding. Thanks for your time, Oleg Nenashev -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-dev/CAPfivLDPkPHSCPao3Nw1SqtykPhTKpaqMnA8ryT31VZVUziXzw%40mail.gmail.com.
