I think we definitely need to do both. Do you think we shouldn't replace the sponsorship program then?
I think on reflection; we’ve structured sponsorships in the format we have to provide a simple bucket to put large donations into. A small set of rewards are an extension, and website lists enable us to show off a healthy list of sponsors as useful PR.
But on the other hand if we think of this as forging a strong network of interdependence in the vain of say TideLift; then this partner program makes more sense. A network of people providing services in, holding responsibilities for, and being dependent on, the Inkscape project is a net positive for the project as it creates community and contribution where we currently have silos.
Having both is only useful if we were seeing the donations focused value coming out of the sponsorships. But we aren't. Only RedHat is still there and that was a side negotiation between me and Máirín (mostly Máirín working RH internals for a year or more). Do you think we should keep the program just in case?
Kinda funny, I wasn't even thinking of RH as a distributor of Inkscape, more as a user in their internal design teams :-)
Large companies are tricky; technically Canonical uses Inkscape... or use to when mpt worked there. But not the rest of the design teams. They probably have more people in the Fedora team than RHEL marketing using Inkscape. {this is pure speculation}
Do we make a distinction between asking Gnome to be a partner as a non- profit and asking a for profit company?
Do you think we should handle distributors? I'm not sure that is en vogue today for desktop applications, but we could make a category for it.
Encouraging distributors to put their nickel down might be useful. I personally believe that there's a big hole where distributor responsibility goes, even if they're non-profits, they're putting themselves between a user's ability to connect and contribute and the projects they repackage. Being pointed in a more positive direction might be healthy.
But this sounds a bit complicated. Are redistributors partners, or regular contributors? Would we invite someone distributing Inkscape on the iPad for money? Should Ubuntu be a parnet via for example your snap work?
Hmm, I guess all the makerspaces around me are all basically non-profit community orgs, usually with a membership fee. So I'm not personally familiar with the other setups. Do you think we should distinguish between a for-profit and non-profit makerspace?
It'll be good for them to all join one category and help each other with links to the same forums etc. There's no material difference in their dependence on Inkscape, but there might be difference in the ability to pay. OTOH if a school is mostly teaching CNC workshops then it smells like a makerspace but with a school board. What's your impression of what is taught in schools?
Best Regards, Martin Owens