- Inkscape Board of Directors

Re: [Inkscape-board] Will Inkscape give mentors option of taking payment for the SoC 2011 (was Re: GSoC Mentor Payments)
by Nathan Hurst 05 Dec '11

05 Dec '11

On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 03:35:17PM -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > Ted Gould wrote on the 23th of November: > > +1, I don't see any reason not to give Google a loan, they seem like > > they might be reliable. > > I haven't heard from anyone else on this, and Ted is opining only on the > issue of fronting the money for Google, not whether or not we should pay > mentors the funds, although I suppose he's implicitly endorsing that > idea. > > Note that I wrote back on the 21st of November: > >>> It is indeed the project's leadership discretion about sending funds > >>> out to the mentors. From Google's perspective, the mentor payments > >>> are a donation to the project. That said, I think it's a good idea > >>> for the project to use the money to pay the mentor, but note that's > >>> not because Google wants it to be so. I think there is some > >>> confusion about this namong mentors: there seems to be a belief > >>> among mentors that the money is theirs to keep in any event, when in > >>> fact it belongs to the project, who then decides (quite correctly, > >>> IMO) to pay the mentor the funds. It's a subtle distinction that I > >>> think is worth bringing up again so that expectations are set > >>> correctly. > > Can you all confirm that you want the Inkscape Project to give the > mentors the option to receive $500/each for mentoring in the SoC in > 2011? As a mentor from previous years I would like to say that the time(s? I can't remember now) when I've been paid the money was very much appreciated. I'm not convinced the money going to the inkscape kitty has much direct value for the project - mentors put in a lot of work for the $500 which in turn leads to successful SoCs which lead to a) better inkscape and b) a higher chance of continued involvement from the student and the mentor. We're not paying oncosts or a mortgage, so sitting on cash doesn't really make sense, it is better to spend it while it still has value. njh

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GSoC Mentor Payments
by Josh Andler 23 Nov '11

23 Nov '11

Hey Board, I wanted to bring up a somewhat important issue related to GSoC and mentoring. As we've continued throughout the years, more and more of the mentor payments have been going to mentors rather than donated to the project (economic issues is a stated factor for many). This in itself is really not an issue, the issue however is the delay in payments to the mentors caused by random and unpredictable issues that happen through the process. For example, payment to one of our mentors (I'm assuming all from last year) for GSoC 2010 didn't get to them until less than 2 weeks ago. A majority of mentors this year has chosen to receive the payments themselves. In at least one case we have an individual who actually needs to have the payment go through very soon for tax purposes in their country. Given that we have a healthy amount of funds in the bank, and the coming funds are for lack of a better way to put it, a sure thing from Google... is the board willing to agree to advance money to ensure we take care of our contributors? I do want to make it clear that we are not paying people to work on the project, just advancing payments to contributors who are hopefully bringing in the next wave of contributors. If the board wants specifics I am more than happy to provide them... however, it's actually something I would prefer to do off a public list for the sake of judgment of any participants in GSoC (as our defacto GSoC admin and an individual who respects others anonymity, I want to respect the privacy of all participants). Cheers, Josh P.S. To the two conservancy accounts, if you are not subscribed to our board list, I would recommend it... it's really low volume and almost always concerns your interaction with us.

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Re: [Inkscape-board] advanced pdf exporting
by Josh Andler 23 Sep '11

23 Sep '11

Hey Alexandre, It smells fishy, but it could also be an opportunity which just appears "off". To even consider it we would need to know who the companies are and to get information about them (Who are they? Where are they based? How long have they been around? What work history do they have? etc). Have they taken into account that Inkscape is cross-platform and it would need to work on all platforms? Not to mention that the developers will need to actually sign up for the developer-list, introduce themselves, discuss their plans, etc. And if they don't want commit access (to avoid 2 patches for each dev involved), we need for them to work in a public branch so that progress and revision history can be tracked. Have the developers even looked at our codebase? Do they have experience with other open source projects? If so, which one(s)? Honestly, this is just tip of the iceberg stuff. I think there's a lot of risk of us putting up news and we need to protect the project and our users. They are really going to need to impress me before I would be willing to consider backing it. For now though, until we get a ton of info (and my ability to verify it) as well as communication going, they won't get my support. Cheers, Josh On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 5:47 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...23...> wrote: > Hello board, > > A day ago I was contacted by Łukasz Remiś who started this campaign: > > http://www.indiegogo.com/Advanced-PDF-export-plugin-for-Inkscape > > to raise funds for development of advanced PDF exporting featuring > CMYK color separation and more. > > I immediately told him. CCing Jon Cruz and Josh, that $800 is not > going to make it and that before he decides on amount of money needed > for that, he has to decide, how exactly he does it, and this is best > discussed with the team. > > The reply came few hours ago and it basically boils down to the > following: he claims to have done a finanical research and found two > companies willing to do that work for $800. So he wants me to post > news on inkscape.org about the kickstarter. > > In all hoinesty. I think this is bullshit. This is clearly not a $800 > goal, and those companies don't have a clue. And since I don't see the > guy contacting *anyone* in the team, at least publicly, I'm inclined > to ignore the request until he contacts the team and they come to > agreement about implementation, scope of the project and real price. > > The problem here is that he thinks he's right, so he might try > reaching to a wider audience, and then it's going to be a disaster. He > already posted that on inkscapeforum, and it's a blessing this hasn't > ended up on omgubuntu yet. > > So, this is the current state of affairs. Whether any decisions should > be taken, is entirely up to you. Personally, I'm not doing anything > until I see an agreement between kickstarter orgs, team and whoever > agrees to work on it. > > Alexandre >

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advanced pdf exporting
by Alexandre Prokoudine 23 Sep '11

23 Sep '11

Hello board, A day ago I was contacted by Łukasz Remiś who started this campaign: http://www.indiegogo.com/Advanced-PDF-export-plugin-for-Inkscape to raise funds for development of advanced PDF exporting featuring CMYK color separation and more. I immediately told him. CCing Jon Cruz and Josh, that $800 is not going to make it and that before he decides on amount of money needed for that, he has to decide, how exactly he does it, and this is best discussed with the team. The reply came few hours ago and it basically boils down to the following: he claims to have done a finanical research and found two companies willing to do that work for $800. So he wants me to post news on inkscape.org about the kickstarter. In all hoinesty. I think this is bullshit. This is clearly not a $800 goal, and those companies don't have a clue. And since I don't see the guy contacting *anyone* in the team, at least publicly, I'm inclined to ignore the request until he contacts the team and they come to agreement about implementation, scope of the project and real price. The problem here is that he thinks he's right, so he might try reaching to a wider audience, and then it's going to be a disaster. He already posted that on inkscapeforum, and it's a blessing this hasn't ended up on omgubuntu yet. So, this is the current state of affairs. Whether any decisions should be taken, is entirely up to you. Personally, I'm not doing anything until I see an agreement between kickstarter orgs, team and whoever agrees to work on it. Alexandre

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Travel funding related...
by Josh Andler 31 Jul '11

31 Jul '11

Hey All, I'm curious if we can do something. This is basically because of my current situation of still having a number of health related issues I'm dealing, and therefore can't maintain any form of steady work right now. Is there a possibility of the project getting a debit or credit card through the SFC that if the board votes to approve funding something Bradley can make payment arrangements in advance rather than it be reimbursement style? For the record, this is coming from a discussion with Jon Cruz last night and him nudging me to attend SVG Open in Cambridge, MA this year. I have an uncle out there I'd most likely be able to stay with, but the airfare would be the issue. As an aside, I will also bring up that we're trying to determine the 2 mentors for the GSoC Mentor's Summit this year as we have three very interested individuals. Jasper and Tav are both presenting at SVG Open this year so they will be in the states within a week of the summit. Felipe also wants to go... If one of them is on the waiting list, generally, Google will have the additional funding intended for the original slot available still and apply that. However, if we were to need additional funding to bridge a gap, what would the board say to funding a potential gap (this is hypothetical on a number of levels)? Cheers, Josh

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Board Membership
by Josh Andler 12 Jul '11

12 Jul '11

Hey All, As previously mentioned, I really feel that JazzyNico and Johan should be given the opportunity to serve on the board. JazzyNico has expressed interest and Johan has not (yet, who knows, I haven't cornered him yet ;). In the grand scheme of things, is anyone willing to be succeeded by either of them? If both are interested and we only have one opening (or none), I would be willing to give up my spot on the board and just serve as community nag/liaison to the board while having no voting power just to empower a current active developer with the ability to influence the project in different ways. Please give input/feedback. Cheers, Josh

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VOTE: Commercial listings policy for inkscape.org site
by Bryce Harrington 12 Jul '11

12 Jul '11

Question: What policy should govern requests by commercial entities for preferential listing on the inkscape.org website. *** All current board members are requested to vote *** Voting: Please rank the following in order of your preference for what Inkscape's policy should be. I. No paid advertisements are permitted. The Inkscape project will consider inclusion of links or references to relevant products as the website maintainers see fit. II. The board votes on each paid link proposal individually. (Basically, status quo for how we're doing things so far.) III. Specific pages on the website are designated for commercial listings. Each page has a standardized format which all listings must follow for inclusion. These listings are ordered by amount paid, with highest paid at the top. No proposals for links or listings on any other location in the site including headers, footers, or menus will be entertained. IV. Similar to III, except all such pages reserve the top section for options that adhere to FOSS principles, secondly items that are gratis, and thirdly commercial. As with III, the commercial listings are ordered with highest paid to lowest. V. Ala Carte. Every location on the website is given a price value for being listed for a specified period of time (e.g. 3 months). A schedule is drawn up and placement is sold on a first-come / first-serve basis. VI. Similar to IV but with a bidding system so prices are set by the highest bidder within a period of time. Motivation: A number of commercial entities have contacted the board regarding permission to promote publications, et al on the Inkscape web site. To date these requests have been handled on a case-by-case basis, but response from the board has been slow, and without an established policy there is a danger of being inconsistent and appearing biased in favor of one group or another. By establishing a policy, the Inkscape project will be able to handle these requests directly and consistently, without requiring committee votes for each.

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Inkscape Conference stuff...
by Josh Andler 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

Hey board, Can we get some conference stuff funded? Primarily, we need a slick banner for SCaLE... the standard one they provide is horrible. Also, if we can find a good supplier, selling Inkscape shirts (for very little profit) would be really cool to both spread the word, make users feel pride, and to raise small amounts of money. Selling at cost may be more awkward due to the odd amounts we'd have to ask for, but if we put it forth as "the less than $1 difference" or "the extra dollar"->"gets contributed to the project". At the very least we need shirts for people manning booths. Any thoughts? Cheers, Josh

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Re: [Inkscape-board] VOTE: Commercial listings policy for inkscape.org site
by Aaron Spike 06 Jul '11

06 Jul '11

On 7/4/2011 12:36 AM, Bryce Harrington wrote: > *** All current board members are requested to vote *** > > Voting: Please rank the following in order of your preference for > what Inkscape's policy should be. > > I. No paid advertisements are permitted. The Inkscape project will > consider inclusion of links or references to relevant products as > the website maintainers see fit. > > II. The board votes on each paid link proposal individually. > (Basically, status quo for how we're doing things so far.) > > III. Specific pages on the website are designated for commercial > listings. Each page has a standardized format which all listings > must follow for inclusion. These listings are ordered by amount > paid, with highest paid at the top. No proposals for links or > listings on any other location in the site including headers, > footers, or menus will be entertained. > > IV. Similar to III, except all such pages reserve the top section > for options that adhere to FOSS principles, secondly items that > are gratis, and thirdly commercial. As with III, the commercial > listings are ordered with highest paid to lowest. > > V. Ala Carte. Every location on the website is given a > price value for being listed for a specified period of time > (e.g. 3 months). A schedule is drawn up and placement is sold on > a first-come / first-serve basis. > > VI. Similar to IV but with a bidding system so prices are set by the > highest bidder within a period of time. IV, III, I, V, VI, II Aaron Spike

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Re: [Inkscape-board] re committee
by Bryce Harrington 04 Jul '11

04 Jul '11

On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 08:26:39PM +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine > <alexandre.prokoudine@...23...> wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 1:56 AM, Bryce Harrington wrote: > > > >> I need three things: > >> > >> 1. Alexandre, please indicate if you find the plan for the board to set > >> a standard policy to be acceptable, or if you think a case-by-case > >> approach as we've been doing it is preferable. > > > > In my opinion a policy is easier to reference to when it comes to > > explaining to commercial entities why we decline proposals or how > > things are done if we accept those proposals. > > > > However policies should be backed by some real work so that they > > benefit our users. Like in this case we have no active documentation > > writing community. > > Any follow-ups? I was hoping for a bit more feedback on the voting options, but I'll take the silence as assent and put the items (with Ted's additional suggestion) up for a vote. Bryce

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