SME Server:Constitution:Administration Fund Raising

Fundraising And Other Ideas

In the course of developing the administration portion of the constitution, a number of ideas were bandied about. These ideas are captured here for use as a starting point should these ideas find merit in the community.

Bounty System / Sponsored Software Development

A bounty system is proposed that will provide a mechanism for other parties to directly sponsor or reward the development of core features, SME add-ons, and/or documentation. The scheme will be loosely modeled after the system used by the horde team (http://www.horde.org/bounties/). The proposed bounty system will have the following features: Two categories of bounty items will be established: Open Bounties and Suggested Bounties.

Open bounties are those which have been fully funded. Funding may be in the form of sponsored bounties (in which an individual or corporate sponsor provides the entire amount), or general bounties which is funded by any combination of corporate and/or individual contributors. All contributors for a bounty will be listed in the header comments for that bounty. All sponsors will have their individual names and/or corporate logos listed with the bounty description (past and current bounties) on the website.
Suggested Bounty items will make the Open Bounty list only when they are fully funded. If the SME officers elect to do so, they may contribute up to 25% of the bounty amount from any uncommitted funds.
Bounty donations may be in the form of checks made payable to the SME organization structure that is adopted or to an account to be determined.
Ideas for new suggested bounty items will come from the prioritized suggestion list that is one of the Communications Manager's duties.
A suggested bounty item may also be submitted by anyone that pledges at least 50% of the suggested bounty.
The bounties for any item that has not been acted upon by any developers may be increased by further contributions until a developer indicates an interest in the project.

Bounty code will be released to the contributors upon completion. Bounty project code will not be released to the general public for three months as a reward to the sponsors of the bounty. Bounty contributors that have contributed at least $50 in the last twelve months will be allowed to download ANY bounty project released within -3/+9 months of their contribution.

Individuals who donate at least the minimum of $20 or businesses that donate at least the minimum of $100 for the purposes of getting access to a bounty download before the three month public access delay, will have their donation deposited in a royalty fund. The royalty fund will be dispersed in it's entirety at the end of the year (Dec. 31). 50% of the fund will be split evenly between all developers who had a bounty project released that calendar year. The other 50% will be deposited in the 'credit' system 'reward' funds (to reward other non-bounty contributors).
To the extent possible, we will look for opportunities to find bounty items that may apply to other OSS projects for the affected modules. An example may be to tie in a Samba related bounty item with the Samba group and/or other Linux distro's bounty programs. This effort will have the dual benefit of raising any potential bounty amounts and enhancing OSS development across the board.

The following rules (borrowed from Horde and extended) will apply to developers:

Bounty Rules

To successfully claim a prize you need to follow a few rules:

All code submitted for a bounty must be without any known intellectual property limitations.
The code must be accepted and committed into the development branch by the module's maintainers before any prize will be awarded.
Patches must conform to dev group coding and style standards.
Potential developers must submit a 'notice of intent' to the DM to indicate that they are working on a particular bounty. The DM will post the fact that work is under way on the website. Additional developers will have three weeks to submit a notice of intent to the DM, or development applications for that bounty item will be considered 'closed'. All developers must provide an estimated completion date which must be accepted by the DM.
In the case of multiple submissions for a single bounty, the judging panel will select and award the highest quality one. Judging will take place after completion date listed by the project with the latest development due date has passed (with a TBA grace period). The judges’ decision is final.
Group or corporate submissions must designate a lead person who will submit the claim on behalf of the group.
All bounty awards or rejections are at the sole discretion of the judging panel. The DM will form the judging panel which will include at least one member from the developers group, the communications group, and ideally a user (perhaps the originator of the suggestion) for a minimum group of two people. We may refuse to award a bounty to anyone for any reason at any time (although there will certainly be a valid reason, since it is in everyone's interest for the bounty process to work smoothly).
A bounty project may be disqualified at the discretion of the DM if a project is way overdue and the developer cannot justify the delay. In such cases, the bounty may be awarded to a competing developer or may be opened up again to new developers.
Any taxes, fees, etc. are the responsibility of the recipient.

Once you have submitted your code and it has been accepted, use this form to claim the bounty prize. Prizes will be paid out using a suitable means that verifies the receipt of funds.

The SME Credit System

Recognizing the tension that is created when regular contributors consider the monetary rewards given through the bounty program, a 'credit' system is proposed to provide rewards to contributors other than bounty program participants. The SME community recognizes that the distribution has thrived based on the freely contributed time and effort of the many participants. The credit system is proposed to provide a mechanism to provide some small recognition for those that have contributed to the community in a 'significant' way. The credit system will function as follows:

A credit scoring system is to be established that will quantify the amount of volunteer effort that an individual has contributed to the community. The score will be cumulative and may be used to obtain materials from the SME Store in a manner similar to airline frequent flyer miles.
The SME store will feature a number of SME related merchandise items and will feature a published 'exchange' rate. The points that are accumulated by an individual may be applied to an item(s) from the store or may be cashed in at the published exchange rate. It is envisioned that the exchange rate will be such that the store items will be a better deal (so as to not deplete the reward funds).
Individual contributors will be responsible for tracking their own scores. A prescribed scoring system will be provided in downloadable spreadsheet form to allow individuals to keep a running tally of their points. Points can be accumulated up to the point where a reward(s) is requested. At that point, the contributor must start the count from zero again to make the verification process manageable. Any points redeemed for cash instead of merchandise will be paid out in a pro-rated manner with other participants if available funds for that quarter are insufficient to pay the entire amount requested by all parties. The administrator of the credit system is empowered to establish limits on the maximum amount of credits that may be cashed in at any time.
Awards will be distributed once a quarter.

The credit system will be administered by a member of the administrative team selected by the elected Business Agent.

The scoring system will be published as an addendum as interest warrants. The scoring system is loosely modeled on the scheme successfully used by the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) for the last thirty years to enable their members to attain the rank of 'Master Model Railroader'. The scoring system will prescribe points for activities such as software development, how-to development, documentation creation, website maintenance, forum moderation and help, translation activities, administrative contributions, etc. instead of the categories established by the NMRA.
The leadership committee may choose to award one or two items a quarter from the store to contributors who have made significant contributions IN THE PAST. The contributors may come from a list of nominations that has been collected and submitted under the direction of the CM from the community at-large.

The SME Store

It is proposed that a small 'store' is established to generate modest income from the sales of SME related and other merchandise. The store would have the dual function of providing merchandise that can be selected by participants in the SME reward system. The idea is loosely modeled on the old Mandrake (and many other) stores that support their own goals. The store would function as follows:

The store would be a virtual e-commerce site.
If any online sales are permitted, the Business Agent would setup merchant accounts along with the Corporate Steward to receive any payments.
SME related merchandise is envisioned as things such as coffee mugs, t-shirts, printed documentation, bounty software downloads (for the 'minimum' donation), etc. Non-SME related merchandise is envisioned as Coupon Books (such as the domestically available Entertainment Books), books, readily available materials suggested by our friends and colleagues outside the U.S.A., etc.
Little to no inventory will be maintained. All items must be acquired on demand and will be drop-shipped by the vendor.
Any SME merchandise presupposes that the community owns the rights to any logos, trademarks, etc. that are used on these materials. The BM will pursue the acquisition of exclusive (preferred) or non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free licenses to any IP that is not owned by the community for use on any SME materials.
All design work for SME materials will be copyrighted on behalf of the community.

Store funds would be distributed by a fixed allocation as decided by the leadership committee. It is envisioned that the major portion of the profit would be used to fund the credit/recognition program with the balance being allocated to other needs.

Website Advertising

It is proposed that limited advertising / sponsoring be used on the community website to subsidize the cost of hosting the site. Said advertising options may include, but is not limited to:

'Google' type content driven ads
Sponsored 'column inch' ads placed by companies / consultants that offer SME installation services
Sponsored 'column inch' ads placed by companies that offer value-added products to a standard SME installation
Other 'column inch' ads that promote any product of service that is applicable or may be interesting to our community.

The ads can be offered site wide (appearing in all pages) or may be limited to specific pages (such as software ads on the GForge pages). A payment schedule should be setup based on demand and on the depth (site-wide or not). At no time should the advertising exceed the nominal page length of the affected page. The advertising should be limited to a fraction of a single column in a three column website design, and preferably should appear in a block at the bottom of the page where it interferes with the content of the page the least.

Advertising standards should be setup that include, but are not limited to:

No ads that would be considered 'spam-like' (fairly unrelated to our community) will be accepted.
Content in the ads will be limited to a standard (to be designed) to minimize any additional bandwidth and download times.
No ads will be permitted (and will immediately be pulled) that in any way attempt to load agents, spyware, etc. on a user's computer. Ads pulled for these reasons will not be given refunds.
Ads will be offered in six month increments, payable in advance. Ads will run starting from the first of the month. The standard 'column inch' ad will be offered in increments of approximately 1/2 inch (13mm) in units to be determined (pixels?).

It is left to the community leadership to decide how and if ads may be used to reward corporate sponsors.