[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Web site updates: Copyright notice and Donation links

[Jim Craner]

Hi Dan,

Sorry, I didn't mean those as "things to resolve *before* implementing your suggested changes" but 
instead as conversation starters for discussions going forward *after* those changes are made.  Updated 
copyright info and a donation button -- go for it, let the donations commence! :)  

I like your suggestions about what additional content might go on that page in the future, too!

Thanks,
Jim


>  -------Original Message-------
>  From: Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net>
>  To: Jim Craner <jim at chicagotech.org>, Evergreen Discussion Group <open-ils-
general at list.georgialibraries.org>
>  Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Web site updates: Copyright notice and Donation links
>  Sent: 17 Jun '11 09:58
>  
>  On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 02:32:37PM -0600, Jim Craner wrote:
>  > Hi all,
>  >
>  > First, congratulations to all of you in the community who have been working on the fiscal sponsorship 
and
>  > organizational sustainability issues -- I think that's a huge milestone, so way to go!
>  >
>  > The copyright/intellectual property status of website content is something that the Website Planning 
Team
>  > (http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=webteam) has started discussing recently.  We want 
to
>  > encourage creation and contribution of content from as many community members as possible and
>  > encourage distribution and sharing of that content in the most user-friendly manner possible while
>  > respecting existing copyright and Creative Commons licensing provisions.  Currently, we've bounced 
this
>  > issue to the greater Communications Committee for further discussion.  If you have any thoughts or
>  > questions or would like to get involved, you can check out our Website Planning Team home page 
linked
>  > above or contact me off list.
>  
>  Great, I think I found the pertinent part of the wiki where the subject
>  was raising; I'm glad people are thinking about explicit licensing of the
>  content. Do you have any objections in the mean time to correcting the
>  current statement on the Web site so that it's 1) not laughably outdated
>  and 2) reflects that copyright over the content is held by more than GPLS?
>  
>  > The donation button/content/process is great news and it's not something that the Website Team has
>  > discussed *at all* yet, but I have some conversation starters that I'd like to share.
>  >
>  > * We don't just want to slap a Donate button up on the site, tell folks *how* to donate, and call it a 
day.  
>  > We need to tell folks *why* they should donate, *what* the EG community will do with the 
donations, and
>  > recognize *who* is donating.
>  
>  Okay. But there are people who have already indicated in this thread
>  that they would like to donate to the project, presumably because they
>  trust that the project will do something good with their donations, and
>  presumably with no strings attached with respect to recognition. In all
>  honesty, it will probably take quite some time to draft policies around
>  all of these areas; do you have any objections in the interim to support
>  opportunistic donations by "slapping up" a donation page (via a link
>  under "Contribute") with an introductory statement like:
>  
>  "
>  Funds donated to the Evergreen project will be directed by the
>  Evergreen Oversight Board <link to Board description> in accordance with
>  the goals of the Board, which are to:
>  
>  i. promote, support, and advance the development of the Evergreen
>  software;
>  ii. support and facilitate the growth of the international community of
>  Evergreen users; and
>  iii. foster and protect the Evergreen assets.
>  "
>  
>  So, in the interim, it would come down to trusting the Evergreen
>  Oversight Board to allocate the donations wisely. Which seems reasonable
>  to me. As you suggest below, there are annual expenses that we have to
>  cover that until now have been covered by the good graces of various
>  organizations like GPLS and Equinox - domain name renewals, servers,
>  etc.
>  
>  > * With donors comes the need for donor management.  Donor recognition, donor cultivation, etc. are 
all  
>  > issues that may not be recognized as important now, but will be in the future, so we should be careful 
to
>  > preserve as much information about our donors and their donations as we can.
>  
>  Although in the absence of an explicit privacy policy, in the interim we
>  should perhaps be discarding as much information about our donors and
>  their donations as we can, no? That said, a number of projects have a
>  donor page listing donors in descending chronological order, with the
>  option of being listed anonymously; that seems like enough to me, if we
>  were to state that as a policy for now. Thoughts?
>  
>  Large-scale donations may be something different entirely; some projects
>  recognize platinum / silver / bronze donors via icons & links on the
>  donation page. In the interim, in the happy event that an individual or
>  organization wanted to donate some large amount (say, $500 or more) and
>  get explicit recognition, it would probably make sense to contact the
>  Evergreen Oversight Board and trust that the right people would be
>  involved in making a decision and putting a repeatable process in place.
>  
>  > * A "donate" button gets better results if it's part of a larger call to action.  Maybe it's one part of an 
overall
>  > drive to have "everyone contribute as they can" - whether that's code, money, documentation, testing
>  > time, etc.  Maybe it's a drive for a specific fundraising target -- pre-paying for ten years of "evergreen-
ils.org"
>  > and related domain registrations, or paying the internship salary for a Google Summer of Code intern.  
>  > Maybe it's just telling the story of an awesome scrappy open source ILS project that is growing rapidly 
and is
>  > seeking funds to build a solid organizational infrastructure to support future growth.  Maybe it's a way 
folks
>  > can get a free T-shirt and a warm fuzzy feeling for a $30 PayPal donation.
>  
>  Sure, that's part of a much larger conversation that may need to take
>  place, if we actually identify a need for large-scale fundraising. Some
>  projects such as the Perl Software Foundation, the Mercurial project,
>  etc, have raised funds to employ developers full-time for a period of
>  time; others have raised funds to help bring developers together for
>  hackfests or offer travel assistance to members from non-profit orgs to
>  conferences; etc.
>  
>  In the interim I see nothing wrong with enabling people to contribute if
>  they feel the urge. In the worst-case scenario, we get tens of thousands
>  of dollars of opportunistic donations and have to decide what to do
>  about that. The horror!
>