[RFC] Sponsorship Questions

[Alexandru Ardelean]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 6:32 PM, Jo-Philipp Wich <jo at mein.io> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> I'd like to discuss whats your stance on sponsorship for the LEDE
> project is.
>
> I've been asked off-list by an interested party what the requirements
> are to become an officially recognized LEDE sponsor.
>
> The sponsor is willing to provide computing resources and to make
> hardware donations, along with potential financial support, depending on
> the legal requirements etc.
>
> In return, the interested party wants to be mentioned as a recognized
> LEDE sponsor (which can e.g. happen in the form of a link / logo on the
> LEDE project web page and an official announcement to the list) in order
> to leverage this position when talking to OEMs and chipset manufacturers.
>
> The potential sponsor is committed to support the open source
> development at LEDE and trying to aid with development for hardware that
> is covered by NDAs.
>
>
> I have promised that I'll take the matter to the list in order to
> facilitate more feedback on how to proceed and to gather a set of
> opinions among the developers.
>
> So the questions are:
>
> 1) Are you okay with endorsing a 3rd party as offical LEDE sponsor?

I'm fine.

> 2) What are the rules you'd like to lay out for such a sponsorship?

It's hard to define I think.
As long as they can operate like the rest of the community members,
anything goes.

That means:
- core design/code should not take priority [due to sponsorship stuff
] over discussion
- specific targets that they might add should try to also adhere to
common framework models

I guess one sentiment that could appear [within the community] is a
fear that they could try to leverage the sponsor status to influence
core.
Which could piss off some people [ maybe me too ].

This can be avoided ; but some way to keep boundaries is the required there.
I'm not the best person to elaborate there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To raise a question [since I don't know]: is there a model out there
in the world [for a set of sponsorship rules, or a sponsorship model,
or subset of a model] that could be adapted here ?
This is based on the idea that this would not be the first open source
project that has to deal with such a request.

>
>
> Thanks,
> Jo
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> lede-adm mailing list
> lede-adm at lists.infradead.org
> http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/lede-adm