Thread: New PostgreSQL Sponsorship Criteria

So, a couple of notes:

(1) the new criteria are the product of Jonathan, Dave Page, Josh Drake,
and me.

> Note that financial sponsors for PostgreSQL conferences are not
> considered for evaluation of PostgreSQL sponsorship.

(2) That's not actually a change from the prior policy.  To be specific:

"conference sponsorships for which publicity and other benefits were
provided by the conference are not considered when evaluating sponsor
contributions."

... however, this was also previously our policy.  The idea is that you
don't get sponsorship value out of the same donation twice.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
<jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
> The PostgreSQL Sponsorship Committee has proposed new criteria for
> determining which organizations are considered sponsors for the PostgreSQL
> project.  The proposed criteria would take effect on Nov 15, 2013, and are
> listed here:
>
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/NewDraftSponsorCriteria
>
> The major change to the criteria, outside of having a detailed list of
> criteria, is that we are reducing the different sponsorship types to two
> categories: Sponsor and Major Sponsor.  These designations will make it
> easier to determine the appropriate level an organization has contributed to
> the PostgreSQL community and will be more inline with how we recognize
> contributors to the PostgreSQL project.
>
> Note that financial sponsors for PostgreSQL conferences are not considered
> for evaluation of PostgreSQL sponsorship.
>
> We would like to hear the community's feedback before we start using the
> guidelines to determine sponsorship.

This looks very well thought out in general, I think, so a "good work"
from me :) And I definitely approve of having a clear policy.

First, one very quick note - it should probably explicitly list
"PostgreSQL Europe" rather than "Postgresql.eu". That's our official
name - just as you use the full name for the Canadian organization,
and not "postgres.ca.". I could fix that myself, but I think it's
probably better if you guys who are actually in charge of the policy,
are also in charge of the edits...


A few other notes:

In the examples at the bottom you refer to "full time contributors".
AFAIK, almost *no* PostgreSQL company has two employees that work full
time on contributing to PostgreSQL. They all do something else *as
well* (which might well be postgresql related). I'm not sure even
EnterpriseDB can claim to have that. I'm pretty sure you didn't
actually mean it has to be someone working full time on direct
contributions though - and in fact, I think it's a strength of our
development team in general that large parts of them don't *just* hack
on the code, but they actually work with the resulting product as
well. So while I'm pretty sure I agree with what you actually mean, I
think the wording needs some improvement.

I also note that for "Sponsors" it's a "code contributor" but for
"Major Sponsor" it's a "contributor". Are those intentionally
different?

Same for servers - for "sponsor" it has to be a webserver, for "major
sponsor" it can be any server - intentional?

I also spot "a company which has hosted four servers for PostgreSQL
for the last five years. ". I hope that doesn't happen much, since it
is a policy of the sysadmin team to *avoid* a situation like that, for
redundancy reasons. We currently have one hoster who runs 4 boxes for
us and it's I think <5 years at this point, but we are sometimes
concerned about having too many eggs in that particular basket. I
think it's a bad idea in general to reward something that is not what
we're really looking for, so I think that limit should be dropped to
maybe two.

I realize these are both in the Examples part - consider that a vote
for that the rest of it is good :)

Finally, I think the wording is a bit unfortunate about conferences.
The bullet list says "Providing repeated, substantial financial or
labor contributions to PostgreSQL community conferences. " is a
considered contribution, but then in a note later down it says "Note
that conference sponsorships for which publicity and other benefits
were provided by the conference are not considered when evaluating
sponsor contributions.". I'm not sure what's actually left at that
bullet point? I'd rather suggest that companies providing *manpower*
for the community conferences are considered as contributions, rather
than sponsorship. (This is very different from organizing a regional
conference - I'm talking about the organizations/people that provide
significant manpower for our larger events)


--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

On 10/11/2013 10:21 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> I'd rather suggest that companies providing *manpower*
> for the community conferences are considered as contributions, rather
> than sponsorship. (This is very different from organizing a regional
> conference - I'm talking about the organizations/people that provide
> significant manpower for our larger events)

Yeah, that was the idea.

Also, companies that sponsor meetings which, for some reason, don't
offer publicity opportunities (e.g. the annual Developer Meeting), would
have that specific contribution taken into account.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> On 10/11/2013 10:21 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> I'd rather suggest that companies providing *manpower*
>> for the community conferences are considered as contributions, rather
>> than sponsorship. (This is very different from organizing a regional
>> conference - I'm talking about the organizations/people that provide
>> significant manpower for our larger events)
>
> Yeah, that was the idea.
>
> Also, companies that sponsor meetings which, for some reason, don't
> offer publicity opportunities (e.g. the annual Developer Meeting), would
> have that specific contribution taken into account.

Yeah, I was wondering if that's actually what you meant. I then
definitely think it needs a better wording to make sure it's clear.
I'll leave the *actual* wording to someone who's a native speaker
though :)


--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
> <jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
>> The PostgreSQL Sponsorship Committee has proposed new criteria for
>> determining which organizations are considered sponsors for the PostgreSQL
>> project.  The proposed criteria would take effect on Nov 15, 2013, and are
>> listed here:
>>
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/NewDraftSponsorCriteria
>>
>> The major change to the criteria, outside of having a detailed list of
>> criteria, is that we are reducing the different sponsorship types to two
>> categories: Sponsor and Major Sponsor.  These designations will make it
>> easier to determine the appropriate level an organization has contributed to
>> the PostgreSQL community and will be more inline with how we recognize
>> contributors to the PostgreSQL project.
>>
>> Note that financial sponsors for PostgreSQL conferences are not considered
>> for evaluation of PostgreSQL sponsorship.
>>
>> We would like to hear the community's feedback before we start using the
>> guidelines to determine sponsorship.
>
> This looks very well thought out in general, I think, so a "good work"
> from me :) And I definitely approve of having a clear policy.
>
> First, one very quick note - it should probably explicitly list
> "PostgreSQL Europe" rather than "Postgresql.eu". That's our official
> name - just as you use the full name for the Canadian organization,
> and not "postgres.ca.". I could fix that myself, but I think it's
> probably better if you guys who are actually in charge of the policy,
> are also in charge of the edits...

Done.

> A few other notes:
>
> In the examples at the bottom you refer to "full time contributors".
> AFAIK, almost *no* PostgreSQL company has two employees that work full
> time on contributing to PostgreSQL. They all do something else *as
> well* (which might well be postgresql related). I'm not sure even
> EnterpriseDB can claim to have that. I'm pretty sure you didn't
> actually mean it has to be someone working full time on direct
> contributions though - and in fact, I think it's a strength of our
> development team in general that large parts of them don't *just* hack
> on the code, but they actually work with the resulting product as
> well. So while I'm pretty sure I agree with what you actually mean, I
> think the wording needs some improvement.

I think we had debated between using "major contributors" and "full-time contributors" as someone could employ multiple
majorcontributors but that could be happenstance, i.e. they are major PG contributors but they work on it completely on
theirown time. 

I'm ok with changing it to "major contributors" because really, the bullet points at the bottom are examples, not the
criteriaby which sponsors will be measured by. 

> I also note that for "Sponsors" it's a "code contributor" but for
> "Major Sponsor" it's a "contributor". Are those intentionally
> different?

I don't believe so, but I'd have to check back in our notes.  I will modify the one under "Sponsors" for now just to
makeit clearer, but the idea was to give examples of what contributors do. 

> Same for servers - for "sponsor" it has to be a webserver, for "major
> sponsor" it can be any server - intentional?

That's just an example.  It could be any server.

> I also spot "a company which has hosted four servers for PostgreSQL
> for the last five years. ". I hope that doesn't happen much, since it
> is a policy of the sysadmin team to *avoid* a situation like that, for
> redundancy reasons. We currently have one hoster who runs 4 boxes for
> us and it's I think <5 years at this point, but we are sometimes
> concerned about having too many eggs in that particular basket. I
> think it's a bad idea in general to reward something that is not what
> we're really looking for, so I think that limit should be dropped to
> maybe two.

I think the sentiment of that example was to echo historical contributions, but of course we want to encourage good
infrastructurepolicy :-)  I will change the example to reflect that. 

> I realize these are both in the Examples part - consider that a vote
> for that the rest of it is good :)

Thanks!

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 6:50 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
<jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
> On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>
>> In the examples at the bottom you refer to "full time contributors".
>> AFAIK, almost *no* PostgreSQL company has two employees that work full
>> time on contributing to PostgreSQL. They all do something else *as
>> well* (which might well be postgresql related). I'm not sure even
>> EnterpriseDB can claim to have that. I'm pretty sure you didn't
>> actually mean it has to be someone working full time on direct
>> contributions though - and in fact, I think it's a strength of our
>> development team in general that large parts of them don't *just* hack
>> on the code, but they actually work with the resulting product as
>> well. So while I'm pretty sure I agree with what you actually mean, I
>> think the wording needs some improvement.
>
> I think we had debated between using "major contributors" and "full-time contributors" as someone could employ
multiplemajor contributors but that could be happenstance, i.e. they are major PG contributors but they work on it
completelyon their own time. 

Yes.

> I'm ok with changing it to "major contributors" because really, the bullet points at the bottom are examples, not the
criteriaby which sponsors will be measured by. 

Right, though I do wonder if there's a good way to phrase the real
intent well - something like:

a company which employs two major contributors to PostgreSQL allowing
them a significant amount of time to contribute to PostgreSQL.

Only better :-)

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:57 PM, Dave Page wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 6:50 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
> <jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>
>>> In the examples at the bottom you refer to "full time contributors".
>>> AFAIK, almost *no* PostgreSQL company has two employees that work full
>>> time on contributing to PostgreSQL. They all do something else *as
>>> well* (which might well be postgresql related). I'm not sure even
>>> EnterpriseDB can claim to have that. I'm pretty sure you didn't
>>> actually mean it has to be someone working full time on direct
>>> contributions though - and in fact, I think it's a strength of our
>>> development team in general that large parts of them don't *just* hack
>>> on the code, but they actually work with the resulting product as
>>> well. So while I'm pretty sure I agree with what you actually mean, I
>>> think the wording needs some improvement.
>>
>> I think we had debated between using "major contributors" and "full-time contributors" as someone could employ
multiplemajor contributors but that could be happenstance, i.e. they are major PG contributors but they work on it
completelyon their own time. 
>
> Yes.
>
>> I'm ok with changing it to "major contributors" because really, the bullet points at the bottom are examples, not
thecriteria by which sponsors will be measured by. 
>
> Right, though I do wonder if there's a good way to phrase the real
> intent well - something like:
>
> a company which employs two major contributors to PostgreSQL allowing
> them a significant amount of time to contribute to PostgreSQL.

"an organization that employs two major contributors with permission to contribute to PostgreSQL"

I would like to add something with "on company time" or "as part of their organizational requirements" but that
sentencemay be enough in itself.  The point is that the organization provides the major contributor(s) the time to do
so

Jonathan

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
<jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
> On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:57 PM, Dave Page wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 6:50 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
>> <jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
>>> On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>>
>>>> In the examples at the bottom you refer to "full time contributors".
>>>> AFAIK, almost *no* PostgreSQL company has two employees that work full
>>>> time on contributing to PostgreSQL. They all do something else *as
>>>> well* (which might well be postgresql related). I'm not sure even
>>>> EnterpriseDB can claim to have that. I'm pretty sure you didn't
>>>> actually mean it has to be someone working full time on direct
>>>> contributions though - and in fact, I think it's a strength of our
>>>> development team in general that large parts of them don't *just* hack
>>>> on the code, but they actually work with the resulting product as
>>>> well. So while I'm pretty sure I agree with what you actually mean, I
>>>> think the wording needs some improvement.
>>>
>>> I think we had debated between using "major contributors" and "full-time contributors" as someone could employ
multiplemajor contributors but that could be happenstance, i.e. they are major PG contributors but they work on it
completelyon their own time. 
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>> I'm ok with changing it to "major contributors" because really, the bullet points at the bottom are examples, not
thecriteria by which sponsors will be measured by. 
>>
>> Right, though I do wonder if there's a good way to phrase the real
>> intent well - something like:
>>
>> a company which employs two major contributors to PostgreSQL allowing
>> them a significant amount of time to contribute to PostgreSQL.
>
> "an organization that employs two major contributors with permission to contribute to PostgreSQL"
>
> I would like to add something with "on company time" or "as part of their organizational requirements" but that
sentencemay be enough in itself.  The point is that the organization provides the major contributor(s) the time to do
so

I think adding something like "on company time" is a good idea for
that one. Otherwise it sounds like the default would somehow be to
forbid employees to contribute to postgresql on their spare time as
well...


--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

* Magnus Hagander (magnus@hagander.net) wrote:
> > "an organization that employs two major contributors with permission to contribute to PostgreSQL"
> >
> > I would like to add something with "on company time" or "as part of their organizational requirements" but that
sentencemay be enough in itself.  The point is that the organization provides the major contributor(s) the time to do
so
>
> I think adding something like "on company time" is a good idea for
> that one. Otherwise it sounds like the default would somehow be to
> forbid employees to contribute to postgresql on their spare time as
> well...

"an organization that employs two major contributors" might simply be
enough.  I feel like we're getting wrapped up a bit too much with this
notion that the company has to explicitly provide time for it, which
might be difficult for a variety of reasons.  If they're major
contributors, chances are they get time at work to work on it.  If the
*contributors* don't feel the company should be listed, then we
shouldn't list the company, but we can let them make that decision (it
should be up to them even if they *are* given some time to work on PG
explicitly..).

    Thanks,

        Stephen

On 10/11/2013 11:03 AM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
> "an organization that employs two major contributors with permission to contribute to PostgreSQL"
>
> I would like to add something with "on company time" or "as part of their organizational requirements" but that
sentencemay be enough in itself.  The point is that the organization provides the major contributor(s) the time to do
so

Well, the idea was to distinguish between contributors who are allowed
to spend 4 hours/week on PostgreSQL by their companies, and contributors
who spend more like 25hours/week of company time.  We have both kinds,
and from a sponsorship perspective, they're not equally valuable.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On Oct 12, 2013, at 4:09 AM, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:

> On 10/11/2013 07:21 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Jonathan S. Katz
>> <jonathan.katz@excoventures.com> wrote:
>>> The PostgreSQL Sponsorship Committee has proposed new criteria for
>>> determining which organizations are considered sponsors for the PostgreSQL
>>> project.  The proposed criteria would take effect on Nov 15, 2013, and are
>>> listed here:
>>>
>>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/NewDraftSponsorCriteria
>>>
>>> The major change to the criteria, outside of having a detailed list of
>>> criteria, is that we are reducing the different sponsorship types to two
>>> categories: Sponsor and Major Sponsor.  These designations will make it
>>> easier to determine the appropriate level an organization has contributed to
>>> the PostgreSQL community and will be more inline with how we recognize
>>> contributors to the PostgreSQL project.
>>>
>>> Note that financial sponsors for PostgreSQL conferences are not considered
>>> for evaluation of PostgreSQL sponsorship.
>>>
>>> We would like to hear the community's feedback before we start using the
>>> guidelines to determine sponsorship.
>>
>> This looks very well thought out in general, I think, so a "good work"
>> from me :) And I definitely approve of having a clear policy.
>>
>> First, one very quick note - it should probably explicitly list
>> "PostgreSQL Europe" rather than "Postgresql.eu". That's our official
>> name - just as you use the full name for the Canadian organization,
>> and not "postgres.ca.". I could fix that myself, but I think it's
>> probably better if you guys who are actually in charge of the policy,
>> are also in charge of the edits...
>>
>>
>> A few other notes:
>>
>> In the examples at the bottom you refer to "full time contributors".
>> AFAIK, almost *no* PostgreSQL company has two employees that work full
>> time on contributing to PostgreSQL. They all do something else *as
>> well* (which might well be postgresql related). I'm not sure even
>> EnterpriseDB can claim to have that. I'm pretty sure you didn't
>> actually mean it has to be someone working full time on direct
>> contributions though - and in fact, I think it's a strength of our
>> development team in general that large parts of them don't *just* hack
>> on the code, but they actually work with the resulting product as
>> well. So while I'm pretty sure I agree with what you actually mean, I
>> think the wording needs some improvement.
>>
>> I also note that for "Sponsors" it's a "code contributor" but for
>> "Major Sponsor" it's a "contributor". Are those intentionally
>> different?
>>
>> Same for servers - for "sponsor" it has to be a webserver, for "major
>> sponsor" it can be any server - intentional?
>>
>> I also spot "a company which has hosted four servers for PostgreSQL
>> for the last five years. ". I hope that doesn't happen much, since it
>> is a policy of the sysadmin team to *avoid* a situation like that, for
>> redundancy reasons. We currently have one hoster who runs 4 boxes for
>> us and it's I think <5 years at this point, but we are sometimes
>> concerned about having too many eggs in that particular basket. I
>> think it's a bad idea in general to reward something that is not what
>> we're really looking for, so I think that limit should be dropped to
>> maybe two.
>
>
> well even more so - an infrastructure sponsor usually does not have any
> control on what kind of service we end up running on that particular
> box. So specifying "webserver" (which we kinda only have four ot of the
> 50 - something VMs we run) seems rather irritating.

Its' just an example though - In the actual criteria we have a list prefaced by "Hosting and maintaining PostgreSQL
serverarchitecture including:" and a list of different types of servers.  The examples are only there to help
demonstratehow an organization is selected.  At the end of the day it's there to help encourage organizations to
sponsor.

Jonathan

On 10/11/2013 11:03 AM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
> "an organization that employs two major contributors with permission to contribute to PostgreSQL"
> 
> I would like to add something with "on company time" or "as part of their organizational requirements" but that sentence may be enough in itself.  The point is that the organization provides the major contributor(s) the time to do so

Well, the idea was to distinguish between contributors who are allowed
to spend 4 hours/week on PostgreSQL by their companies, and contributors
who spend more like 25hours/week of company time.  We have both kinds,
and from a sponsorship perspective, they're not equally valuable.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

-- 
Jean-Paul

On Oct 14, 2013, at 11:54 AM, Jean-Paul Argudo wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> 1st, thanks to the PostgreSQL Sponsorship Committee for their work. If I had to write some kind of comments, I'll do
thesame ones Magnus did. So basically, it's a big +1 on Magnus' mail here. 
>
> But:
>
> Le vendredi 11 octobre 2013 à 11:13 -0700, Josh Berkus a écrit :
>>
>> On 10/11/2013 11:03 AM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
>> > "an organization that employs two major contributors with permission to contribute to PostgreSQL"
>> >
>> > I would like to add something with "on company time" or "as part of their organizational requirements" but that
sentencemay be enough in itself.  The point is that the organization provides the major contributor(s) the time to do
so
>>
>> Well, the idea was to distinguish between contributors who are allowed
>> to spend 4 hours/week on PostgreSQL by their companies, and contributors
>> who spend more like 25hours/week of company time.  We have both kinds,
>> and from a sponsorship perspective, they're not equally valuable.
>
> I completely agree here.
>
> Still, we'll face a problem : how will the Commitee control that? Who will be responsible of such a control?
>
> As an axample, I can speak for Dalibo. We have all kind of contributions. We have a general rule of 20% worktime
dedicatedto research and development, including community stuff, but also internal stuff. The rule is quite
approximative...Some do 100% community, others way less, since we have also internal projects for our people to work
on.
>
> Ah, and, others do community stuff apart from the worktime too, I mean at night and week-ends. Sure they are free of
doingwhat they want, at least in the non-working hours, but also on some of the working-hours..... 
>
> Also lots of us do community tasks at work too, most of the time its a big mix between business and community...
>
> So calculating for Dalibo's time contribution is quite a nightmare, including for myself. So I don't even think about
anyoneon this list :-D 
>
> So basically my objection is that we drop the examples, and let the general rules apply, as the Committee can freely
decide? 

+1

The main idea behind the examples was to provide clarity to the points above, but it seems like we are causing more
confusionthan not :-) The goal is to encourage organizations to allow their participants to work on Postgres and thus
contributeto the community, and the feedback I am getting is that the examples might be counter to that, particularly
withusing time contributions as a metric. 

Ultimately the criteria itself allows the committee enough flexibility and transparency to make the sponsorship
decisions.

Jonathan

JPA,

> So calculating for Dalibo's time contribution is quite a nightmare,
> including for myself. So I don't even think about anyone  on this
> list :-D

We don't need to calculate the exact hours.  We know that Dalibo has at
least two people who spend a LOT of time on community contribution
stuff, and have for years; that's good enough to decide the
sponsor/major sponsor split (plus Dalibo as a company does other stuff).
 This is why the two-level system is nice: less hairsplitting.

My purpose here is to distiguish this from, for example, Aster Data or
Google, each of whom have one staff member who spends less than 20% of
their worktime contributing to PostgreSQL, which makes them "sponsors"
as opposed to "major sponsors".  And as others have pointed out, in
borderline cases we can just ask the contributor themselves.

> So basically my objection is that we drop the examples, and let the
> general rules apply, as the Committee can freely decide ?

Well, I think we need *some* examples, or the rules are going to be
pretty unclear.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

All,

Based on the discussion here, I've made some draft changes:

1) added a whole separate "Event Sponsorship" section to clarify that.

2) redid the examples.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com