Re: Commitfest problems

On 12/12/2014 11:35 AM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Uh, really? Last I looked at the numbers from SPI treasurer reports,
> they are not impressive enough to hire a full-time engineer, let alone a
> senior one.
>
> The Linux Foundation has managed to pay for Linus Torvalds somehow, so
> it does sound possible. We have a number of companies making money all
> over the globe, at least.

You're looking at this wrong. We have that amount of money in the
account based on zero fundraising whatsoever, which we don't do because
we don't spend the money. We get roughly $20,000 per year just by
putting up a "donate" link, and not even promoting it.

So, what this would take is:

1) a candidate who is currently a known major committer

2) clear goals for what this person would spend their time doing

3) buy-in from the Core Team, the committers, and the general hackers
community (including buy-in to the idea of favorable publicity for
funding supporters)

4) an organizing committee with the time to deal with managing
foundation funds

If we had those four things, the fundraising part would be easy. I
speak as someone who used to raise $600,000 per year for a non-profit in
individual gifts alone.

However, *I'm* not clear on what problems this non-profit employed
person would be solving for the community. I doubt anyone else is
either. Until we have consensus on that, there's no point in talking
about anything else.

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