[Debian-sponsors-discuss] What are we doing and what more can we do to reward companies and individuals that are supporting Debian?

[Dr. Michael Meskes]

> I don't think adding this additional and separate path into
> debian-companies is counter-productive.

I beg to disagree,

> In other words, if we clearly set the criteria for what participation
> in debian-companies means, what the goals are, and what is and isn't
> allowed on the list, quality can be maintained.

Well, this is why we added the 2DD rule, everthing else might be too
complicated to check.

> If debian-companies is to get off the ground, I think we need to
> provide addition paths to advertise and enter the group, as this graph
> indicates there are only 4 members of the group atm:
> http://lists.debian.org/stats/debian-companies.png

It's not the amount of companies I'm worried about, For sponsoring more
is bette, I give you that, but for this "community" I don't think so.
Debian-companies could for instance be the one address other companies
might go to for questions about deploying Debian, hopefully even for
complex setups. But this means we have to have very high technical
expertise on the group and it has to be viewed as very knowledgeable
from the outside. Now I ask you what kind of impression people on the
outside get if yu only have to pay a certain amount of money to become a
member?

> Two possible options here:
> 1) Lower criteria to 1 DD.

1DD is fine if you only ask companies to have a certain size.

> 2) Also allow larger sponsors to participate (by not making it a
> permanent membership in the group, we are free to change the
> requirements if it proves that the requirements are too open.) This
> would also allow people working on sponsorhip to invite companies to
> participate.

See above, I don't think this will become more than a sponsoring group then.

> Well, at this point I think that ADDING the requirement of having
> financially sponsored Debian as an additional requirement to enter
> joining debian-companies is probably something we shouldn't be doing
> ATM, due to the already low participation.

Honestly I think the low participation comes from nobody really driving
it. As Stefano already pointed out we need a coordinator to drive this more.

Michael
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