1.. _sponsoring-faq: 2 3================================================================================ 4Sponsoring FAQ 5================================================================================ 6 7Why does GDAL need sponsorship? 8------------------------------- 9 10GDAL is the most central piece of [Critical Digital 11Infrastructure](https://www.fordfoundation.org/campaigns/critical-digital-infrastructure-research/) 12in the geospatial world, serving as the primary building block for data management and processing 13in open source, commercial, and government geospatial software. But most of the resources to it 14have gone to the development of new features, while the maintenance burden has only increased with 15more functionality. 16 17The purpose of sponsor funding is to provide substantial long-acting resources 18that give the project the ability to address software, testing, and project 19challenges that do not attract individual sponsorship attention. With 20a pool of resources that are not earmarked for features, it can 21attack usability, performance, and modernization challenges that benefit everyone. 22Sustained funding enables multi-year efforts that do not 23disrupt the existing GDAL user base, and it will provide the baseline 24resources to allow day-to-day maintenance operations to continue uninterrupted. 25 26The larger funding levels enabled by sponsorship aim to help GDAL grow to a team of maintainers, 27as is typical in other leading open source projects. The past few years have seen only one maintainer, 28who has been stretched thin. The resources provided by this effort allow maintenance activities to 29continue *and* allow the project to support on-boarding additional developers to tackle various needs 30of the project that have been ignored due to lack of direct funding interest. 31 32My organization wants to sponsor. How can we do that? 33----------------------------------------------------- 34 35To learn about the benefits of becoming a sponsor at 36various levels start with the `Sustainable GDAL Sponsorship Prospectus`_. 37If you are interested, need help convincing your key decision-makers, or have 38any questions, don't hesitate to contact gdal-sponsors@osgeo.org. 39 40.. _Sustainable GDAL Sponsorship Prospectus: https://gdal.org/sponsors/Sustainable%20GDAL%20Sponsorship%20Prospectus.pdf 41 42What is NumFOCUS and why is the project using that foundation rather than using OSGeo for this effort? 43------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 44 45`NumFOCUS <https://numfocus.org>`__ is a US-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit that is already managing 46funding for many individual software projects using this model such as Numpy, 47Jupyter, pandas, Julia, and SciPy. They have staff, policies, procedures, and 48infrastructure for managing the financial support of open source software 49projects with this funding model. Many organizations in the initial list of 50sponsors are already funding projects through NumFOCUS, and adding GDAL to the 51roster improves efficiency on their side. 52 53`OSGeo <https://www.osgeo.org>`__ does not have staff and procedures to manage tracking workloads and 54payments. OSGeo also does not provide tax-exempt status for contributions. 55NumFOCUS has established relationships with a large number of the initial 56sponsors. These properties are why the GDAL PSC has chosen the NumFOCUS path 57for management of this effort. 58 59So GDAL is a NumFOCUS project now? 60---------------------------------- 61 62Not exactly. GDAL will be a project within NumFOCUS under the "Grantor-Grantee Model". 63OSGeo is still the primary foundational "home" of GDAL such as it is, but NumFOCUS 64is providing this financial vehicle and service to the project under the purview of 65its charter. 66 67What is the project going to do with the money? 68----------------------------------------------- 69 70* The GDAL PSC will control the purse strings. Contributors seeking resources 71 will submit a proposal to the PSC (RFC-style, but not public) describing the 72 tasks and efforts they will seek to achieve. Any substantial efforts with 73 external impacts will continue to be required to use the GDAL RFC process as 74 described in :ref:`rfc-1`. 75 76* Developers will be able submit requests to the GDAL PSC for 'maintenance 77 work units', which could encompass ticket i/o and related code improvements, 78 CI grooming, mailing list gardening, and fuzzing response activities. 79 80* A significant portion (25% per year if possible) of the resources will be targeted toward 81 *growing* new active developers into the project. Examples of this include 82 soliciting ticket and code contributors with funding if they show interest 83 and aptitude, and providing resources to mentor and support junior developers who are 84 working into roles in the project. These activities are 85 extremely hard to do without financial support. 86 87* Spot resources will be available to attack needs that have difficulty finding 88 funded attention, such as API improvements in support of specific application 89 niches and subsystem refreshes like build, tests, and CI. The GDAL PSC could 90 fund significant RFCs that demonstrate need and agreement on an ad hoc basis. 91 92* The GDAL PSC will delegate some resources to GDAL-related projects and 93 dependencies – libtiff, libgeotiff, PROJ, shapelib, and the various language 94 bindings and libraries. If more resources than the GDAL project itself can 95 use are available for a particular year, the project will open them up to the 96 wider community of related libraries and users to repurpose them. 97 98How can the resources be used? 99------------------------------ 100 101The funds cannot be used benefit an individual contributor or be directed by a 102contributor through the non-profit organization. For example, a fictional 103Imagery Corp cannot fund NumFOCUS with explicit intent to have those resources 104used to fix bugs or add features that benefit Imagery Corp. Imagery Corp can 105still continue to solicit GDAL active contributors, or actively contribute the 106fixes themselves, to achieve their goals with the software. 107 108How is this going to impact GDAL software releases? 109--------------------------------------------------- 110 111A primary goal of this effort is to provide resources needed to allow the current 112GDAL maintainer to 113keep up the existing release schedule and cadence. Without these resources, the 114schedule was likely to have significantly stretched out to one or two 115maintenance releases per year. 116 117Can I use some of the funding to support fixing something? 118---------------------------------------------------------- 119 120Quite possibly. The GDAL PSC will provide a proposal template where you will 121need to describe the issue(s), propose the approach and impacts of it, and 122state your cost to complete the effort. 123