[dpl-helpers] How to recognize larger non-earmarked financial contributions to Debian?

[Brian Gupta]

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Paul Wise <pabs at debian.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2016-02-29 at 10:20 -0500, Brian Gupta wrote:
>
>> donations at debian.org (auditors) has been having a back and forth with
>> a company, that now wants to contribute $5k to Debian's General Fund.
>> (We gave them the choice to donate to DebConf, but they chose general
>> fund). I know the logistics of handling the incoming funds, but I'm
>> not sure how to get them the proper recognition, as we don't have a
>> standard way to recognize financial donations to our general fund.
>> (This company also contributes services to Debian.)
>
> Right now we don't have great ways to do this outside of DebConf AFAIK.
> We could adapt the things done for DebConf to this; a thanks on
> identi.ca and twitter etc.

I think we need this on a webpage somewhere. (microblogging is nice, but it's
probably too ephemeral to be the only recognition.) Some options for a
page title:
1) Patrons
2) Donors
3) Sponsors
4) Benefactors

>> I thought maybe the partners page, but the Partners Program info page
>> states "Donations will be recognized separately". Under donations,
>> there doesn't seem to be a list of financial donors, only "equipment
>> and service", "hosting and hardware sponsors" and "official mirror
>> sponsors".
>
> We recognise financial partners in the partners program, but those are
> more like ongoing financial support, like revenue sharing programs.

Hmmm. Going to luca's point, do you know why the partners program
specifically historically excludes straightforward cash donations? I am
sensing there must be a reason.

> I don't think we have ever had a public list of donors other than
> corporate sponsors as I don't think we had the financial data to
> support doing this properly yet?

I think we should pick a threshold, and list people above that level.

>> Perhaps we can do something like WIkipedia benefactors page [1], which
>> is reset and archived each year.  (I am pretty sure we need something
>> that is reset annually, and in general should have some policy to
>> prioritize recognition of more recent and ongoing donors.)
>
> I'd say remove donors one year after they donated rather than reset
> every year. This way each donor gets one year of recognition. People
> should have the option to donate anonymously though.

Agreed on both points. But it can only work if we figure out a way to
(mostly) automate archiving donors off the list 366 days after their
last donation.

> Ongoing donors are recognised in the partners program under financial
> partners I would say.

Ongoing donors? Anyone, one thought about the partners page. It is
really long, and each partner takes up a good deal of space. I'm
wondering if it might make sense to just provide a one line summary
for each partner, and have a link to get more details?

> I'd suggest doing a survey of donors/sponsors pages for Linux
> distributions and Free Software non-profits (like FSF/SFC) to see what
> best practice is and what features we should have. Some links:
>
> https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/
> https://www.gnu.org/thankgnus
> https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors
> https://www.gentoo.org/inside-gentoo/sponsors/
> https://linuxmint.com/donors.php
> https://grml.org/donations/
> https://grml.org/sponsors/
> http://aptosid.com/index.php?module=Content&func=view&pid=8
> https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en

I'll try to look at these soon. (I've already seen about half of them.)

> I was thinking of putting hosting sponsors on contributors.d.o but
> through discussion with contributors folks we decided that wasn't the
> best way to do it as they are more like partners. I wonder about
> individuals and companies who donate at certain times though, maybe
> that fits better with the model of contributors.d.o.

I agree that contributors are a separate beast.

> --
> bye,
> pabs
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
>
>