As someone interested in making content for Inkscape, I think we could possibly attract quite a bit more funding on the educational front (and perhaps some day become the de-facto vector program every student learns on) if we offered an educational package, which included courses on specific topics (like Inkscape for CNC, Inkscape for Graphic Design, Inkscape for Illustration).

Mostly though, I love the idea of different kinds of supporters. That will be a lot of fun to make swag for, when I can find a good solid job (hopefully in FOSS) to support my contribution activities.
-C

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 3:34 AM <doctormo@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

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