[Freegis-list] Funding for free projects (was: ArcInfo to Free conversion)

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 11:26:39AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote:
> On 09 Jan 2001 18:54:17 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote:

> > Perhaps an idea: Why not spending the "proprietary maintenance tax" into
> > such a project like GRASS? That will speed up its development - of course it
> > remains free. Such GRASS-related funded projects are already running, but it
> > could be more.

> Do you have an explicit policy whereby a group of counties could make an
> investement in GRASS for functionality it may lack or for modifying the
> development priorities of the project? 

Best is always to hire somebody to actually add the functionality
you need. Students who are interested in GRASS anyway are often happy
to get some funding for their hobby. You can also hire professionals.

To give you some examples
Frank Warmerdam was hired a couple of times for geospatial
programming and created free software add ons for GRASS.
Sometimes these were by-products and sometimes the main product.

ImageLinks sponsors a OSSIM GRASS bridge
and hired Frank Warmerdam and Intevation (us!) for doing the job
through SourceExchange.

> I suspect it is much easier for a group to cough up a few thousand
> dollars than find an employee who could do the work. 

True, SourceExchange or CoSource 
http://www.sourcexchange.org/
http://www.cosource.com/
might be place were you can write and fund special requests.

> You would never get them to spend all of the proprietary
> maintenance tax"  on GRASS but perhaps  they would give you a
> contribution if they could show the higher authorities that it was
> generating software for their specific needs.

Some foundations accept smaller donation, but basically will put
them to general use for free software.

Buying FreeGIS CD also helps us to keep the project alive of course.  :)
	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
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