Re: [Fsfe-uk] RFC: Sponsorship

[Richard Smedley]

On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 12:52, Ramanan Selvaratnam wrote:
> My understanding is that a donor provides to further our cause, trusting
> us for the decisions we would make whereas a sponsor provides toward a
> particular task that probably is mutually beneficial.  

Precisely - that is why sponsors are best acknowledged
directly in connection with that which they target.

eg an event sponsor on all materials relating to
that event. A website host at the foot of the homepage.
A leaflet sponsor on the back of a leaflet who's
print run they have paid for. Etc.

> We would then link to "/donors" where sponsors will be a sub section.
> This would provide a chance for some one who got involved with us over a
> particular sponsored material to consider more involvement (provided our
> home page is attracting the correct type of traffic)

I've no problem with a donors' page linked from
the main page - however this is quite separate
from sponsors, who should be mentioned in
relation to their sponsorship.

Nevertheless a sponsorship archive could be created,
I just don't think people would go out of their
way to look at it, but it would be useful for
the sponsors (to point at).

> > I'm personnally more and more convinced, that we should rather turn a
> > sponsor down than being abused for their own PR. This will loose us some
> > donations, but I'm more than willing to accept this.

Many environmental improvements are sponsored 
by Shell - this doesn't make people think Shell
aren't gross polluters with an appalling record
on human rights. Just that they put some money
into environmental improvements (as opposed to,
say, other multinational oil companies who are
gross polluters with an appalling record on 
human rights, but *haven't* sponsored such
schemes).

But yes, we shouldn't just take money from anyone.

> I want donors and sponsors to be committed promoters of free software
> themselves. 
> If there are not many out there then the AFFS must [strive to] foster
> such
> organisations/businesses.

There are people we would love to sponsor us
and there may be those we wouldn't. For most the
problem will be where to draw the line.
The GNU Service directory clause mentioned by
Brian elsewhere in this thread seems a good
basis for something...

> Not sure whether any of our rules are "strict" though. IMHO they are
> mostly common sense to promote sustainable, high quality software and
> healthy attitudes to the best of our abilities.

Then again Microsoft (to take a proprietary software
company purely at random)sponsoring an AFFS event would
be of far greater benefit to us than to them. ;^)

 - Richard

-- 
Richard Smedley

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/
The GNU/Linux magazine for IT decision makers

   ``One cannot hope to bribe or twist,
     Thank God! the British journalist
     But seeing what the man will do
     Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.''
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