On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 04:54:44PM +0100, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
On Fri, 2015-12-04 at 00:41 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 03, 2015 at 11:09:25PM +0100, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > The SVG Working Group will be holding a face-to-face meeting in
> > Sydney
> > at the beginning of February. I know we've discussed funding SVG
> > Working Group travel through dedicated fund raising but as that
> > system
> > is not yet functional
>
> Ah hang on, I think there might be some misunderstanding of what the
> funded development tool is for - it's not a fundraising tool, it's
> more
> just a way for targeting already-raised funds to specific development
> projects. So, like you'd run a kickstarter or whatever to generate
> the
> funds, then dole the cash out to N different coding tasks that are
> defined in the system. It's not intended for doing anything with
> conference travel or anything like that.
Yes, I have misunderstood the funded development tool. I thought it was
specifically so we could raise funds directly without needing to rely
on an external entity that would be taking a cut of the raised funds. I
specifically recall us discussing if it were possible to tag PayPal
donations automatically so we could track donations for different
development projects.
It would be great to have something other than Paypal but that's a
whole other issue.
This system will be connected to the Ledger accounting tools rather than
to Paypal directly. So theoretically we could use any payment provider,
or even hand-written checks or whatever. The only requirement is that
the donations be tagged per-fundraiser in Ledger in a way that lets us
mechanically identify and tally them up (so we know how much $$ has come
in for each fundraiser).
The system will then let the person who organizes the fundraiser split
the funds up to specific development projects.
Raising funds through Kickstarter means having two entities taking a
percentage of the donations. Would donations still be tax deductible as
they are if directly given to SFC? Who is legally liable for the use of
the funds? The "Funded Development" page has a lot of rules/regulations
that would be hard to enforce if funding is raised through an outside
organization like Kickstarter.
Yeah potentially depending on how things are set up, there could be a
lot of intermediaries taking a dip of the proceeds. :-/
Again though, the payment processing end is entirely external to this
system. We care only about what amounts actually are in our account in
the end, and that they're tagged so we can find them. Taxes, fees,
etc. all come out ahead of that.
It's left to whomever sets up the fundraiser to decide whether to
minimize the cuts, or to minimize the time they have to invest into
organizing it, or into making the fundraiser snazzy, or whatever makes
the most sense.
> You don't need any specific
> tool for that - or, really, we already sorted out the tooling needed
> for
> that when we did the hackfest fundraising.
It was my impression that the tool we used for Hackfest fund raising
was put in place as a stop-gap measure until we had our own system in
place. Having said that, the tool worked well so I don't see a problem
with reusing it.
Oh hmm. I do remember early on in the research for that noticing that
there were a couple different ways to interface to paypal, and we did
opt for the simpler of the two. My memory is a bit fuzzy on that
though, but perhaps that was what caused the confusion?
> So, really all you need to do is set up a paypal page like we
did for
> the hackfest, but reword the text to showcase the importance of the
> SVG
> WG work you're doing. What you've written below makes a great start.
> The hackfest donation page is not live but it's still in Django:
>
>
https://inkscape.org/en/hackfest/?edit
>
> Make a copy of that page, replace the text and photo, and have Karen
> or
> Bradley generate a new Paypal widget thingee with its own category
> "svg-wg" or whatever. Once you have the page prototyped I can lend a
> hand requesting the paypal link if you want - basically karen just
> needs
> to log into the paypal interface and push a few buttons I think.
I have created a page (need Martin for a few tweeks to add an image or
two):
https://inkscape.org/en/svg_working_group/
It might be better if you (Bryce) ask Karen about a PayPal link since
your our official contact.
Ok will do.
> Then put out a call for funds via blogs and other social media,
like
> we
> did for the hackfest. I think a *lot* of people care about SVG, and
> if
> the hackfest fundraising is anything to judge you may well raise a
> LOT
> of donations - which will then be earmarked for your SVG WG trips
> going
> forward. My hope is that this'll get you enough funding that it'll
> never have to be a question in the future.
Let's hope so...
> Anyway, that's all I really had in mind when I was suggesting
> this. If
> you've been blocked waiting for the funded dev tools, oops sorry
> about
> that.
Yes, that was blocking me...
In the case that this fund-raising effort doesn't payoff in time for
purchasing a ticket to Sydney, I would still like the board's opinion
of proving back-up funding.
Certainly, I'll work on that too.
Bryce
> By the way, I also created a wiki page with a bunch more
fundraising
> ideas. I suspect just a plain old direct ask approach will be more
> than
> sufficient but if you want some more creative ways to beat the
> bushes,
> this might give some inspiration:
>
>
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Fundraising_Ideas
>
> Bryce
>
> > (and as we've been quite successful in raising
> > funds the past two years) I would like to see how board members
> > feel
> > about my asking for funding to travel to this meeting.
> >
> > The SVG 2 specification is firming up. The one big section that
> > still
> > needs work is the text chapter. The major difficulty here is the
> > need
> > to interface to all the relevant CSS text specifications, some of
> > which
> > are not very far advanced. I've got a ton of issues that need
> > addressing. At the Sydney meeting there will be a one day joint
> > meeting
> > with the CSS working group. Being able to sit down with the CSS
> > people
> > is the best way of making progress.
> >
> > I've been doing most of the work for the text section. I've had
> > some
> > help from another group member but he's in the process of ramping
> > down
> > his participation in the working group. The Sydney meeting is
> > likely
> > the last meeting he'll attend.
> >
> > I estimate the cost for attending the Sydney meeting to be about
> > the
> > same as last year: a bit under $2500 (I was reimbursed $2250 last
> > year).
> >
> > Last year's Sydney meeting was very successful from our
> > perspective.
> > One can read my report at:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/blog/?m=201502 ;
> > This
> > year's meeting will be more on dotting the 'i's and crossing the
> > 't's
> > as we try to get the spec out the door.
> >
> > BTW, as I work on the spec, I've also been working on Inkscape's
> > text
> > rendering. I've recently fixed some issues with vertical text as
> > well
> > as issues with multi-line text. I've also implemented the new
> > 'text-
> > orientation' attribute and there is a rendering only implementation
> > of
> > SVG 2.0 wrapped text.
> >
> > Tav