Josh Berkus wrote:
> Andrew,
>
>> 1. Do we think it is a good idea, in general, to fund
>> individuals' travel, assuming such individuals are fairly prominent
>> members of the community?
>
> Yes. Currently, the only people capable of speaking for PostgreSQL who
> also have jobs that pay them to do public speaking frequently are me,
> Bruce, and Gavin (plus others in Japan). There are more than 100 open
> source conferences a year; we can't possibly cover them all with the three
> of us.\
I can also speak but it does effect me financially but as many know I
don't like to travel much. Anywhere in North America is no sweat.
>
> Travel sponsorships allow other members of our community to promote and
> educate about PostgreSQL in many, many more places. I know that if we'd
> had travel money available in 2003, I would have gone to conferences in
> Brazil and Indonesia to promote PostgreSQL -- that was a big part of the
> reason why Robert Treat and Greg Mullaine started to put together a
> non-profit in the first place.
Right.
>
>> 2. If the answer to (1) is "yes", what weight do such cases
>> carry compared to other possible expenditures, such as paying coders
>> for features; paying for hardware or network service; paying for
>> community presence at exhibitions (e.g. getting a "commercial" booth
>> at a trade fair); paying for marketing such as advertisements,
>> conference "swag", release CDs, and the like; paying for tools for
>> individual (or groups of) developers, such as real copies of the SQL
>> standard; or even paying for entry to the "industry" groups or
>> standards like TPC, ANSI, &c.? The list is not exhaustive; make up
>> your own case.
>
> Personally, I think it's co-equal with the things above categorically,
> *except* for paying for a commercial booth at a conference, which I feel
> should be our lowest priority if we have cash just lying around. It's the
> most expensive item, with the lowest benefit to the community.
In general I agree with this.
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
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