EncourageSponsorship

A number of people who work on open-source TWiki work for companies, who get very little recognition for their contribution. Increasingly, more and more TWikiExtensions are sponsored by companies, who employ others to do the work for them. This is an excellent trend; sponsors fund the development, and the resultant work is pushed back into the public domain for the benefit of others.

IMHO it would be nice if the TWiki project made more of an effort to acknowledge the debt owed to these sponsors. So, how about:

1. Allocating an optional field in the PackageForm for the sponsor? The purpose of the field would simply be to make the sponsor searchable.
2. Have a page of core features that have been sponsored.
3. Having a link on the TWiki.org front page that links to a page of sponsors, together with an acknowledgment of what they sponsored? The page could show their corporate logo in a size proportional to the amount they sponsored (like a tag cloud). Allocate 1 point for an extension bugfix, 5 points for a core bugfix, 10 points for a complete new Plugin, Contrib, or Skin. Points for core features allocated at the discretion of the developer.

Note that this is completely different to recognition of individual contribution. Individual contribution is recognised by the TWikiHeart, and listing in the AUTHORS, and the Author field in the extensions. It might be nice if this site made more effort to advertise individual contributions, though.

-- Contributors: CrawfordCurrie - 21 Jul 2007

Discussion

This is a great idea! I especially like the first two points. I am somewhat suspicious that if there is too much talk about company sponsors, potential private developers might say: "they have so much institutional support, they don't really need my help." But I might just be wrong here...

-- MatthiasRoeder - 21 Jul 2007

I think it is an excellent idea. And I support all 3 points.

People that sponsor extensions and TWiki applications and give them back to the community for free should be recognized.

Some may argue that those organizations get TWiki for free and that giving back contributions is the least they can do. But I choose to see it the positive way. There are so many that just download and do not even bother to report bugs or participate in beta testing. So I think it is very reasonable that those companies and organizations that contribute get some visible recognition. And it may also have a positive effect of getting more contributions and more funding.

And for TWiki as a product and project - this becomes good references and that can only enhance the image of the project.

Funny idea with the point system. It is worth a try. Being a beta test installation on a server with at least 10-20 users should be a way to earn points. We need that soon for 4.2.0.

-- KennethLavrsen - 21 Jul 2007

I recon the points system would be a fun an interesting way to show not just involvement of sponsors, but also of all contributors - points for bug reports opened/closed/reproduced/..., feature requests, per XKb of changes to TWiki.org topics, per XLines of code changed, per contrib, per unit test

All biased towards whatever the most needed things are at the time

and then the cute badges for milestones, and so on - essentially, an advanced TWikiHeart system that does not rely on someone else noticing contributions.

(if this post sounds sarcastic, it is not - I've been playing with my IconBuffet account, which shows that if seamless, such a thing does generate grins)

-- SvenDowideit - 22 Jul 2007