Inkscape sponsor requirements
Hey all. As requested of me at the board meeting, I've typed up a "common sense" draft of what I think is in-line with the project's purpose and goals.
I thought about all the ways I could think of that a sponsor could make the project look bad with their actions, so here's the result:
Sponsorship Requirements:
The Inkscape project was founded to serve a world-wide community of artists, hobbyists, designers, scientists, engineers, and people everywhere by providing free and open source software (FLOSS) tools for vector graphics production. Since our sponsorship offerings include the service of exposure on our website, we require that all sponsors meet the following criteria to ensure a mutual compatibility with the spirit of the Inkscape Project. Thus to qualify for sponsorship, a sponsor must be:
1. A Legal, Law-Abiding Business - Must be registered as a business, pay taxes, and maintain a good standing with their customer base, and the country(s) in which they do business.
2. Politically Neutral - Our community is vast, and serves users from all walks of life and political views. The Inkscape Project does not, and therefore must not be seen to support one any particular ideology (beyond that of our belief in the essential software freedoms), and thus can not accept support from organisations of a political or religious nature.
3. Supportive of User Freedoms - A sponsor must not have a history of abusing user freedoms. This includes the sale of and promotion of proprietary software as part of the sponsor's core business, which we consider incompatible with the project's goals of user freedom.
4. Supportive of the Environment and the Future - The Inkscape Project can not accept donations from companies which promote the destruction of the environment. This includes companies which fund climate change denialism, anti-science groups, and members of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
5. Supportive of Equal Rights, Free Speech and Gender Equality - A sponsor must not fund groups which seek to deny the rights and freedoms of others based on gender, race, creed, religion (or lack thereof), or sexual preference.
If a sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project reserves the right to pull the sponsor from our website, at which point a prorated refund of the donation amount will be returned to the sponsor.
CR,
This looks great!
The sponsor must also be able to communicate in English or a language that a volunteer translator can provide intermediary services into English.
Technically speaking, the majority of tech firms are anti- environmental, but we'll gloss that over because I don't think it's solvable.
Martin,
On Sat, 2017-11-04 at 18:09 +0000, C R wrote:
Hey all. As requested of me at the board meeting, I've typed up a "common sense" draft of what I think is in-line with the project's purpose and goals.
I thought about all the ways I could think of that a sponsor could make the project look bad with their actions, so here's the result:
Sponsorship Requirements:
The Inkscape project was founded to serve a world-wide community of artists, hobbyists, designers, scientists, engineers, and people everywhere by providing free and open source software (FLOSS) tools for vector graphics production. Since our sponsorship offerings include the service of exposure on our website, we require that all sponsors meet the following criteria to ensure a mutual compatibility with the spirit of the Inkscape Project. Thus to qualify for sponsorship, a sponsor must be:
- A Legal, Law-Abiding Business - Must be registered as a business,
pay taxes, and maintain a good standing with their customer base, and the country(s) in which they do business.
- Politically Neutral - Our community is vast, and serves users from
all walks of life and political views. The Inkscape Project does not, and therefore must not be seen to support one any particular ideology (beyond that of our belief in the essential software freedoms), and thus can not accept support from organisations of a political or religious nature.
- Supportive of User Freedoms - A sponsor must not have a history of
abusing user freedoms. This includes the sale of and promotion of proprietary software as part of the sponsor's core business, which we consider incompatible with the project's goals of user freedom.
- Supportive of the Environment and the Future - The Inkscape
Project can not accept donations from companies which promote the destruction of the environment. This includes companies which fund climate change denialism, anti-science groups, and members of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
- Supportive of Equal Rights, Free Speech and Gender Equality - A
sponsor must not fund groups which seek to deny the rights and freedoms of others based on gender, race, creed, religion (or lack thereof), or sexual preference.
If a sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project reserves the right to pull the sponsor from our website, at which point a prorated refund of the donation amount will be returned to the sponsor.
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Inkscape-board mailing list Inkscape-board@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-board
On Sat, Nov 04, 2017 at 06:09:36PM +0000, C R wrote:
Hey all. As requested of me at the board meeting, I've typed up a "common sense" draft of what I think is in-line with the project's purpose and goals.
I thought about all the ways I could think of that a sponsor could make the project look bad with their actions, so here's the result:
This looks like a great start for the conversation, thanks for putting it together so quickly!
Sponsorship Requirements:
The Inkscape project was founded to serve a world-wide community of artists, hobbyists, designers, scientists, engineers, and people everywhere by providing free and open source software (FLOSS) tools for vector graphics production. Since our sponsorship offerings include the service of exposure on our website, we require that all sponsors meet the following criteria to ensure a mutual compatibility with the spirit of the Inkscape Project. Thus to qualify for sponsorship, a sponsor must be:
- A Legal, Law-Abiding Business - Must be registered as a business,
pay taxes, and maintain a good standing with their customer base, and the country(s) in which they do business.
- Politically Neutral - Our community is vast, and serves users from
all walks of life and political views. The Inkscape Project does not, and therefore must not be seen to support one any particular ideology (beyond that of our belief in the essential software freedoms), and thus can not accept support from organisations of a political or religious nature.
The limitation on companies involved with political advocacy is a good one; it fits with our requirements from Conservancy that we not engage in any politics.
I don't think we need to exclude religious organizations though. Hospitals, universities, etc. sometimes are religion-affiliated but I don't think we want to automatically turn them away as sponsors if they were interested.
- Supportive of User Freedoms - A sponsor must not have a history of
abusing user freedoms.
Yeah, this is one we've wondered about in the past. We should do more thinking on these lines.
This includes the sale of and promotion of proprietary software as part of the sponsor's core business, which we consider incompatible with the project's goals of user freedom.
Boy, this might be tough. A lot of companies (my own employer included) have feet in both free and proprietary camps. I suspect a lot of potential sponsors will have kind of mixed records here, and it might get kind of tricky to judge. Even Microsoft, bad as they've been historically, do a huge amount in the open source field.
- Supportive of the Environment and the Future - The Inkscape Project
can not accept donations from companies which promote the destruction of the environment. This includes companies which fund climate change denialism, anti-science groups, and members of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
Martin's got a good point that a lot of corporations have environmental issues associated with them, so this one may hit a bit too broadly. Funding climate change denialism probably is adequately covered by the politically neutral requirement.
Does anyone know if other open source projects have requirements regarding industries they don't accept sponsorship from? If we decide we want to go that route, it might be useful to see how they word it and which industries they exclude.
- Supportive of Equal Rights, Free Speech and Gender Equality - A
sponsor must not fund groups which seek to deny the rights and freedoms of others based on gender, race, creed, religion (or lack thereof), or sexual preference.
If a sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project reserves the right to pull the sponsor from our website, at which point a prorated refund of the donation amount will be returned to the sponsor.
I'd revise this last bit to:
"If a prospective sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project will unfortunately need to decline the offer of sponsorship."
We'll be making the judgment on the sponsor using these requirements prior to them signing up. Once the sponsor has landed I doubt we'll be giving them much more attention.
Thanks again for putting this together!
Bryce
This looks like a great start for the conversation, thanks for putting it together so quickly!
Thanks for the feedback. I think rather anything I put down as requirements was bound to be a bit controversial, though I'm pleased to be helpful in getting the conversation started.
I don't think we need to exclude religious organizations though. Hospitals, universities, etc. sometimes are religion-affiliated but I don't think we want to automatically turn them away as sponsors if they were interested.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to extract a religious organisation (churches, etc) from politics. There's a difference though between this and your examples:
A hospital's main business is making sick and injured people well again among other things. A University's main business is education. That they may be affiliated with a particular religion is fine, but their core business is not religious.
A church's business, on the other hand, is religious recruitment, retention, and the spreading of political ideology. They may do other things, but that's their core business.
Note: This is regarding *visible* sponsorship. I'm not suggesting turning away *donations* from anyone, however if we are going to display links and logos on our website as an incentive for sponsorship, I think we should be careful about who we accept as a visible sponsor. To me, that's what this page is about.
- Supportive of User Freedoms - A sponsor must not have a history of
abusing user freedoms.
Yeah, this is one we've wondered about in the past. We should do more thinking on these lines.
I'm open to more thoughts, but the truth is, people will come to us and tell us that an organisation is doing x,y, and z wrong. We don't have to put every potential sponsor under the microscope (just an initial perusal of their "about us" page would probably suffice).
This includes the sale of and promotion of proprietary software as part of the sponsor's core business, which we consider incompatible with the project's goals of user freedom.
Boy, this might be tough. A lot of companies (my own employer included) have feet in both free and proprietary camps.
I'd imagine there will be exceptions. Some companies donate code for example, however for monetary donations where visibility is requested or required the project must be a bit careful who we promote as part of sponsorships.
To me, if a company is making efforts to sell and promote free software that's probably enough to be OK as a sponsor listed on the website.
I suspect a lot of potential sponsors will have kind of mixed records here, and it might get kind of tricky to judge. Even Microsoft, bad as they've been historically, do a huge amount in the open source field.
Would we accept a MS logo and link on the Inkscape page? I rather think not. :) But maybe I'm misreading the situation or the general project feeling towards proprietary software vendors, but I'd no more put a MS logo on the page than an Apple logo, Oracle logo, or in fact most other corporate tech logos. Most of them are wholly unqualified to be sponsors of Inkscape, and their very existence is damaging to user freedoms across the board. While there is no catch-all rule we could implement that covers every situation, I think something like my wording might make it clear that if your company is pro free software, and puts user freedoms first, it will certainly follow in their reputation. No one is a perfect example, but we're not demanding perfection.
- Supportive of the Environment and the Future - The Inkscape Project
can not accept donations from companies which promote the destruction of the environment. This includes companies which fund climate change denialism, anti-science groups, and members of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
Martin's got a good point that a lot of corporations have environmental issues associated with them, so this one may hit a bit too broadly. Funding climate change denialism probably is adequately covered by the politically neutral requirement.
Environmental issues in production are one thing, campaigning to destroy environmental protection laws, regulations, in the name of corporate profit are quite another. If we can take a stand, I think we should. I'm flexible on it, like everything else. If everyone feels that environmental protection is "political" and we should thus stay out of it, then I'm willing to re-think it. It's yet another contention point that I'd like to avoid. I'd never recommend accepting donations from the palm oil industry either. It's an opportunity to use our collective voice to support a better future. I understand this can be seen as "political" though, so I'm flexible. Talk me out of it. :)
I'd revise this last bit to:
"If a prospective sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project will unfortunately need to decline the offer of sponsorship."
We'll be making the judgment on the sponsor using these requirements prior to them signing up. Once the sponsor has landed I doubt we'll be giving them much more attention.
I expect people will come to us after seeing logos and links on our website, and alert us to wrongdoing.
How about this:
If a sponsor is found at odds with any of these essential compatibility points, the Inkscape Project will unfortunately have to decline the kind offer for sponsorship. The Inkscape Project also reserves the right to pull the sponsor from our website if later found to be at odds with the above criteria, at which point a prorated refund of the donation amount will be returned to the sponsor.
Thoughts?
-C
Thanks CR.
Would we accept a MS logo and link on the Inkscape page? I rather think not. :) But maybe I'm misreading the situation or the general project feeling towards proprietary software vendors,
The project has a range of views. I'd probably fight pretty hard against a Microsoft sponsorship until it reached millions of dollars. Just on reputation alone. But others take a more pragmatic (or should that be forgiving) stance which means they won't see any reason not to accept a bung from any company, no matter their past/present/politics.
I'm flexible on it, like everything else. If everyone feels that environmental protection is "political" and we should thus stay out of it, then I'm willing to re-think it. It's yet another contention point that I'd like to avoid. I'd never recommend accepting donations from the palm oil industry either. It's an opportunity to use our collective voice to support a better future. I understand this can be seen as "political" though, so I'm flexible. Talk me out of it.
It's worth having a short list of industries we'd rather not deal with. A great one is tabacco, which would be problematic because many countries ban the advertising of tabacco. Arms is similar, straightforward. Other industries depend on politics and their reputations and what they're asking us to link to.
Martin,
participants (3)
-
Bryce Harrington -
C R -
Martin Owens