On Aug 19 2022, at 3:07 pm, Ryan Gorley <ryan@freehive.com> wrote:
What constraints are imposed on the project from its management by SFC as a non-profit? Can we provide any kind of official endorsement of such business(es)? What would we require in return for such an endorsement? Could such entities solve some of our organizational, promotional, development challenges and be contract by the project via SFC directly to do so?
Nothing really. We're welcome to determine those relationships generally, just we need to be transparent about it. As long as the Inkscape foundation remains committed to improving and building Inkscape in an open manner and not a corporate tax dodge, I think the SFC would be supportive. The SFC is very flexible generally, they just want to ensure we do not put their tax status at risk.
I've got about half a document written on redoing the sponsorship program to take this into account. Hoping to post that next week, thanks for stealing my thunder man 😉
I suspect that there will be concerns about how this could corrupt the project, namely by souring feelings among those who donate their time. That should certainly be considered because the project still functions primarily by the effort of those who are not paid (by the project at least). I don't see anything in our licensing that would prevent such businesses from forming though, though. I think getting in front of that possibility (and embracing the opportunity) by answering these questions and drafting guidelines on how to support such outside, for-profit entities, especially those that enhance the core mission of the project, would be a good idea.
I think that a lot of difficulty arises less based on getting paid, as much as people tend to work at different paces and are able to keep up. For instance, if there is a group of paid developers and they're going to work on Inkscape 40 hours a week, and it'll move more quickly, and it'll be harder for others to keep up with all the things happening to be able to contribute. Also, they'll likely rely more on synchronous communication modes like chat, and that's the only place that things would be shared which is impossible to keep up with if you're not working full time on it. Sync is often easier but it increases the barriers for volunteer contributions.
Hopefully any company that hires those folks would be interested in the community management folks that largely work to ease over those lines. They're good at making sure that there are on-ramps and awareness of all that is going on the project. But, if they're not, that would be a role that we should ensure gets filled.
Ted