Re: Major donors

On Thursday 23 March 2006 14:20, elein wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 01:34:46PM -0500, Robert Treat wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 12:37, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > > As sponsors page that will delineate between size of monetary
> > > contribution is going to cause problems with those who donate a great
> > > deal of in-kind contributions.
> > >
> > > Elein is a perfect example. If she goes to 3 shows how much is that
> > > worth? My day rate is 2500.00 (if I am out of towm) plus expenses....
> >
> > ISTM if you are distributing flyers/business cards with your name over
> > them, your already getting a return on your time investment at a given
> > show, especially in cases like oscon where the booth is provided to the
> > project for free. If you are paying to get postgresql entry into the
> > conference (like was recently discussed in the dubai thread) then that
> > might be a little different, but I think we need some kind of
> > delineation between companies who pay developer salaries, people who
> > staff booths where they get to advertise their wares, and people who
> > send in a check (Well, that assumes the goal isn't just to compile the
> > largest list of sponsors we can, but actually give real recognition to
> > those who continually sponsor this project and the folks who might give
> > a one time donation).
>
> If all I did was to staff a booth at conferences and hand out cards, then
> you might have a point. However, this is not the case for me.

I guess I have to point out that my above statement was not directed at you
specifically? We get a lot of companies that staff booths at a lot of shows.
Honestly I am glad that they do, from what I have seen they represent the
community in a fantastic way. But do we have to turn a blind eye to the fact
that some of these people are their for commercial purposes, and they they
are served well by that exposure, and that they are not getting raw deal out
of it?

> I created
> PostgreSQL flyers (not varlena flyers). I organize the pin effort. I help
> organize the booth. I work with the oscon committee. I give talks at
> conferences and user groups which require preparation. I write a
> semi-weekly column with a huge archive. I do get a little marketing
> visibility in there but believe me I work and pay for it dearly since most
> of what I do goes to educating the postgresql user community for free.
>

You "pay for it dearly"? If your activities are hurting your business that
much, by all means cut back on them.

> This is just me. Certain other people also do not get paid for their work
> and time above and beyond self-interest. We consider it our contribution
> back to the community. This, I believe, is how and why open source works.
>

Berkus has a nice way of laying out how all open source contributions are done
in some form of self-interests. I tend to agree with it. Some people do open
source as a desire to say thanks, some do it as a way to promote certain
ideals, and some do it expecting to get paid for it. I tend to care more
just that people contribute than as to exactly why they contribute, but I
don't feel the need to obfuscate these motivations either; if we want to
recognize specific types of contributions (like cash donations) then let's do
that. If people feel that this would discriminate too much against people who
have not contributed in that specific way, then let's make a "this person has
probably had some type of involvement with the postgresql project, or at
least has struggled through pronouncing the project name" list and we can
start signing people up for that I'm good either way... as Justin used to
post in his sig:

"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

But let's be honest with ourselves about what we're doing.

> Why does it bother you to acknowledge work and time of others? (That is a
> rhetorical question.)
>

Really? It sounds more like an insult. And an ironic one at that given I have
been the primary driver of getting people added to the recognized developers
and corporations lists for the last couple of releases.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL