+1 and more to Carl and Howard That said, having been inside a FAANG I can understand that the contortions that you have to go through just to get a "charity" payment approved in terms of proving probity especially post SOX are enormous. I tried to get a G-normous company to provide network support after the earthquake in Nepal. It took a 5 minute call to VP to get a 6-figure budget and 6 months to find a route to get the money or goods delivered! I was told at the time that the lead time for getting a new not-for-profit organisation approved was 2 - 5 years! And don't even think of trying to get a payment for services without a service description, PO and invoice from an approved supplier. It is just physically impossible. They have huge resources in developer time that they throw around at a moment's notices but exporting cash is impossible.
I don't know the solution. The usual solution is an existing large, US-based foundation that has existing dealings with the FAANGS that could act as a conduit (perfectly legally). On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 at 23:08, Carl Godkin <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > Regarding funding, I thought the barn raising that Howard mentioned from a > few years ago was a good thing. My little company made a donation and I > think we'd do it again were another "barn" proposed. Tools like GDAL & > PROJ and related projects are worth supporting and periodic donations seem > to be an easy way to pay our part. > > Thanks, > carl > > On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 2:58 PM Howard Butler <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On Jan 13, 2021, at 4:28 PM, Nyall Dawson <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 at 06:24, David Strip <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> What is the path forward? One path Howard suggests is establishing a >> foundation similar to that behind Qgis. Another alternative, probably far >> more controversial, is a license change. >> >> >> I'm pretty clueless regarding licenses -- but this is an interesting >> thought. I wonder if any new drivers added to GDAL could be done with >> a dual-licensing under both GPL + some other license which requires >> ongoing sponsorship of the GDAL project? >> >> >> License monkey business isn't viable in any way with GDAL. It would just >> create confusion and erode trust, which we can't get back if broken. >> >> The big organizations running 100,000,000s of CPU hours extracting >> information from imagery they're reading in COGs with GDAL need to be >> donating substantial resources into an organization that provides >> coordination. The last time I did a fund raise with gdalbarn.com I was >> called out for naming some of these organizations and expressing my >> disappointment they couldn't find a way to participate or simply ignored >> the request. Maybe they will step forward this time around. >> >> Whether it is in a new foundation or an existing one like NumFocus, >> substantial resources need to be dumped in a pot that are earmarked for >> supporting work that generates value for the project. Chasing new >> feature work to subsidize project maintenance activities is not sustainable >> in two directions – burn out for the maintainer and creeping feature-itis >> for the project. >> >> It's clear what's happened in the past is a combination of luck and >> graciousness by both Frank and Even. >> >> Howard >> _______________________________________________ >> gdal-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev >> > _______________________________________________ > gdal-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev >
_______________________________________________ gdal-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev
