pcav
commented
4 years ago Braindump from Richard: It is some quick googling, and what I personally feel should be a FOSS project.
I tend to have a clear separation between the community/project and companies trying to make a living from it. The project should be leading, and not spend direct money on companies for features, but only for bugfixing, infra and architectural changes, preferably to individuals. In this way the project is hopefully better suited to steer/foster the project (only).
Companies make money by investing time/money in the project (because they live (partly) from it), AND they take money from user-groups/companies to implement things/fix stuff directly, but ideally in communication with the project (via QEP?).
I think a foss project should try to spread it's money over as much dev's as possible (actually to attract as much dev's as possible).
But this is personal. I tend to see Debian as a good example, but do not like all the rules they have in place... In my ideal world everybody thinks/feels the same about shared goals and values... but not sure if that is reasonable..
https://www.debian.org/social_contract
https://www.onecommunityglobal.org/purpose-mission-values/
https://www.ubuntu.com/community/mission
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/
Andrea's Geoserver responsibility and participation https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/Some-ideas-about-minimum-community-software-responsibility-and-participation
How to handle diversity and growth
QGIS is growing from a small community based project to a large(r) project being used and handled by a more and more diverse group of people. My feeling is that sometimes this (diversity) is giving some friction/frustration. We really like the project, it's community and the overall atmosphere around it. We think it is worth to step back and try to find what we need to get this thing going.
Maybe we can try to write down some guidance for community members on what we think is important to know. Not so much to have rules, but more like guides which can give a direction when we or somebody has a hard time.
Not sure where to start:
Positives?
- we are a very healthy FLOSS project used by a lot of users all over the world, on several different OS's
- we are pretty independent
- I still have fun doing QGIS
Negatives (well, as I see it)?
- money flowing in is good, but also changing the playing field
- it's hard to get a conclusion with such a diverse group of values/stakes
Vision?
- make QGIS the best free Desktop/Server gis available for everybody in the world
- make QGIS the preferred tool to make the (GIS) world a better place to be
- serve as an sustainable example of a FLOSS project
- create an community around QGIS where it is safe and friendly
Values?
- QGIS is a world wide Free Open Source community (NOT a (wannebee) international company) creating software
- the project should refrain from commercial activities
- BE responsible, SHARE responsibility, TAKE responsibility
- BE respectfull (from onecommunityglobal: Care, Share, Play ??) (from fedora: “Four Foundations”: Freedom, Friends, Features, and First)
Philosophy? (from wordpress: out of the box, design for majority, decisions not optons, clean lean mean, Striving for Simplicity, Deadlines Are Not Arbitrary, The Vocal Minority,
Mission or Objectives = how, specific (SMART)?
Risks (what can go wrong)?
- QGIS taken over by commercial interest, loosing the connection with the original community vs
- QGIS claimed too much by the community, while the commercial interest is great but under-used
Users, Devs, Community, Project lead?
- do these have different rules/guides?
Future?
- have a commercial offspring (or not)
Some (please read/scan) food for thought:
- https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43zak3/the-internet-was-built-on-the-free-labor-of-open-source-developers-is-that-sustainable pointing for example to:
- https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure
- https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/Some-ideas-about-minimum-community-software-responsibility-and-participation
- https://www.debian.org/social_contract
- https://www.onecommunityglobal.org/purpose-mission-values/
- https://wordpress.org/about/
- https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-linux-journals-resurrection-taught-me-about-foss-community " "While the FOSS community still had the original nerdy members and new nerdy members continued to join, most of the growth in the community was from professionals. Many different professional Linux and FOSS conferences existed that were priced to attract people who could get their company to pay for them. These new community members were more focused on the practical benefits of Linux and FOSS (low cost, compatibility and the ability to modify code from a FOSS project for company use). Unlike the original community, these members were less focused on FOSS ideals."
I've thought a lot about how to write this down, but I keep getting around and having questions/unclearities.
I hope people find this interesting enough to think about it too, so we can put together some kind of 'guide' on how to handle the future.
QGIS will be free as much as possible
- QGIS should be as independent as possible: financially, technically etc
- we will always favour free and FOSS tools and technologies. Only if free (as in beer) services are easily available and preferred by the majority we will use those.
- when connecting QGIS to external tools (like libraries, services and plugins) we try to favour FOSS on all platforms
- for all Operating systems that the communtity finds time to package for (though there is no guarantee that your OS is actually being packaged: if nobody stands up to do the work (for free or for a fixed amount of money 10%?), there can be no packaging. We WILL try to get things done though, but within the financial boundaries set below)
We will be transparent
- how much money comes in, from who (though companies who accept tainted money is a loop hole)
- how much money goes out (to services, individuals and companies)
Community is important
- we will not try to act as a company: we do not want to make a profit, we will refrain from actions which would negatively affect the community
- we will try to be inclusive, and share the 'power' and 'finances': no individual or company (or project) will get more then 10% of that years budget (I think this point is important: I hope it will force companies or individual who want to "live from QGIS" to go into the QGIS market theirselves: it should be possible to live from QGIS-work but is is not done to live "upon the QGIS-community".)
- we will accept money from companies, founding members etc etc, but the community should stay independent from that, and companies doing work for QGIS should be transparent where they get the money from (so we are not squashed between big governmental agencies of huge commercial companies)
- the community profit from companies and should be gratefull for that
- the companies profit from the community and shoule be gratefull for that
QGIS should be as stable as possible
- we will try to setup machinery which will make it more stable: CI, automatic test, manual tests
- stability is more important then features
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-linux-journals-resurrection-taught-me-about-foss-community
" While the FOSS community still had the original nerdy members and new nerdy members continued to join, most of the growth in the community was from professionals. Many different professional Linux and FOSS conferences existed that were priced to attract people who could get their company to pay for them. These new community members were more focused on the practical benefits of Linux and FOSS (low cost, compatibility and the ability to modify code from a FOSS project for company use). Unlike the original community, these members were less focused on FOSS ideals. " " The FOSS community of today was different and more diverse. We needed to serve the whole community "
Should there be a distinction between?
- the project / the money
- the community / the people and companies ( maybe an commercial entity ?? )
SUPER READ: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43zak3/the-internet-was-built-on-the-free-labor-of-open-source-developers-is-that-sustainable Pointing for example to: https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure https://www.fordfoundation.org/media/2976/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure.pdf#ford_roadsandbridges_WORKING_DRAFT.indd%3A.41267%3A83
and https://dhh.dk/2013/the-perils-of-mixing-open-source-and-money.html who says: "It's against this fantastic success of social norms that we should be extraordinary careful before we let market norms corrupt the ecosystem. Like a coral reef, it's more sensitive than you think, and it's how to underestimate the beauty that's unwittingly at stake. Please tread with care."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-bh6gP3m2LrsuAEJ5eZM7uTjXNv5roRIA1sc8eN0Gxw/edit?ts=5cff5f9e#heading=h.4hvy87cjuibv Idea: crowdsource ideas? → next user question What is your vision for QGIS.ORG? What should be the goals of QGIS.ORG?