[OOTB-hive] Donations / Sponsors etc

[Ole Hejlskov]

Dear bees

I was catching up on all the messages I missed, and one thing caught my eye.

Oksana wrote this on aug 11 on the “Status update” thread about donations. It got a bit buried and rather than try to revive that thread, I think this deserves it’s own.

-----
3. Donate/Sponsorship

We are independent from Alfresco. But I start thinking about sponsoring Order of the Bee. Donations don't work, but maybe companies in which our members work and some other companies would like to be mentioned as sponsors (like Document Foundation has). If we are ready to consider sponsorship than we may add this information on the website.

Why do we need it?
- buying t-shirts and printing whitepapers
- paying for the servers if we need them in future
- drinking beer all together :)

Why does someone want to give us some money?
- cheep marketing
- if a sponsor ask us to look at a bug in an add-on, it would be difficult to say “no"
-----

We need to figure out a very clear policy regarding money within the order. We will need money soon for servers (testbed, live etc) - or get sponsored servers.
It’s a tough question, because I don’t want money to be the driving factor in the order.

If we start taking donations/sponsors and they are allowed to expect or demand certain fixes, then we in fact just become an organisation that does bug fixes for money. 
This might not be a bad thing, it is certainly a way to drive in the money we need for our activities, but we need to be very clear and transparent about it.

In my opinion, sponsors/donations should not be allowed to demand a specific bug fix, but rather have the money go towards general improvements and supporting our efforts in the order, or should they?


/Ole