Pls Support Conservancy: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/

[Jeff King, Shawn Pearce and myself represent the Git project to the Conservancy, and here is a request for help from us.]

We apologize that we're interrupting the usual content on this mailing list with a fundraising message, but the non-profit home of the Git project, Software Freedom Conservancy, is in urgent need of your immediate support: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/

Git receives a myriad of important services (see https://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ ) from Conservancy. We have relied on Conservancy since 2009 to provide them, and we ask that you support them. While Git gladly contributes 10% of our project's gross revenue to Conservancy's general fund, (while Conservancy maintains and administers the other 90% in collaboration with us to advance the Git project), that 10% of contributions from all Conservancy's member projects doesn't add up to enough to even employ one full time person, let alone the already overworked staff of three that Conservancy has.

Conservancy's fundraiser, found at https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/ , is centered around asking individuals who care about the work that Conservancy does to donate $120/year, or just $10/month, to support the organization. Conservancy seeks about 2,500 Supporters to continue its current work, and 750 Supporters to continue a "bare minimum" of services to its projects.

Here are some of the things that Conservancy does for Git that are in the "bare minimum" category:

 * Handle our Google Summer of Code payments and travel, including
   handling all financial transactions with Google to receive and then
   disperse the money.

 * Coordinating travel reimbursements for Git contributors to attend
   conferences.

 * Buying and shipping hardware to Git volunteer contributors who need
   it.

 * Keeping the non-profit status for us so that we don't have to form
   our own org and file our own paperwork.

Here are some of the services Git has received in the wider category:

 * Dealing with questions from the community about the DCO and legal
   issues surrounding contributions to the Git project.

 * Discussing the issue of copyright governance and contributions with
   large corporations who want their employees to contribute to Git
   but need legal assurances or have questions relating to Git's
   license or contribution policies.

 * Helping us write the Git trademark policy:
   https://git-scm.com/trademark , registering the trademark, and
   enforcing the trademark when we need it.  This assures Git users can
   know that when they see something called "Git", it relates to the Git
   project in some way.
 
 * And, in fact, we do very occasionally find companies violating the
   GPL on Git, and Conservancy has helped us out with that.

As you can see, Git really relies on the important work of Conservancy, and thus the Git project leadership encourages you to choose Conservancy as one of your charitable gifts this holiday season. (Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) charity incorporated in New York, and donations are typically deductible on U.S. taxes.)

Please visit: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/

I just wanted to add that the Conservancy does really important, thankless work on a shoestring budget. I've known Bradley and Karen for years and I've seen how dedicated they are to keeping free software free.

I'm a Conservancy supporter, and I hope you'll join up too!

On Tue, 2015-12-22 at 08:02 -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

On 12/22/2015 05:02 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I agree that SFC is a great and worthwhile organization and I also encourage people who care about free and open-source software to become supporters.

Do we have an idea whether the Git project's 10% contribution is covering its own costs to the SFC? 10% sounds rather low to me, given the legal and administrative services that they provide.

Let's consider contributing more (e.g., 20%) of the Git project gross revenue to SFC.

Michael

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 07:08:28AM +0100, Michael Haggerty wrote:

I'm not sure whether we have good numbers there. I think the most "expensive" thing Conservancy does for us is legal services, most of which has been for the Git trademark (preparing the application, helping write the policy, dealing with requests, etc). I don't know whether they log the hours for that or not. I've cc'd Bradley, who can probably say more.

I think that's a reasonable idea. We don't spend much of our money, so I don't think it would make a big impact on Git's finances. On the other hand, we don't _have_ much money in the first place. I think we have on the order of $15K collected over the last several years. So another 10% would only be $1500, or only a few hundred dollars per year.

Another option would be to give a lump-sum of Git money occasionally, after seeing how much we have, upcoming expenses, etc. Besides a little bit for trademark fees (to the USPTO), I think our only expense is generally travel assistance. We have Git Merge coming up, and a couple people have asked me about assistance to the developer's summit. So I'd probably want to hold off on any lump-sum giving until we've allocated that money.

We may also be able to fulfill those requests without touching Git money at all (e.g., by asking conference sponsors to chip in for developer travel). In general, we could also probably bring in more money by actively soliciting donations. We haven't so far, mostly because Git itself doesn't really do anything with the money (so there's a donation link on the git-scm.com site, but it's not very prominent).

Last year the ticket money from Git Merge went entirely to Conservancy. Given the number of companies that use or build around Git, I suspect soliciting medium-to-large donations from companies would probably be productive.

-Peff