CONCEPT D – Hybrid – Establish New Nonprofit Partnering with Small Consortium of ODK-related Companies to Maintain and Further Develop ODK
This topic is for discussing people's thoughts on Concept Note D. For more information or to take the online survey, please refer to general Exploratory Concept Notes topic.
The source PDF for this note can be found here.
D. OVERVIEW
This concept note envisions establishment of a new ODK-specific nonprofit, similar to that of Note B but differing in that it would be smaller in size and the bulk of development is done not by nonprofit staff but by a consortium of ODK-related companies working with the foundation. The foundation would be heavily guided by this consortium of companies via membership on the board.
D.1. STRUCTURE
As with Note B, this concept would establish a new 501(c)3 nonprofit to own ODK IP and oversee the project; similarly, it could get a fiscal sponsor as an intermediate transition step. The nonprofit would have a Board of Directors and officers responsible for legal and fiscal authority and which would provide high level direction (similar to top-level role of current ODK PMC), and work to sustain the organization and the ODK project. Technical Steering Committees (TSC) would also be established for each ODK component. Unlike Note B, the board may have a large fraction of paid-for positions, for example similar to the “platinum” level memberships of the Symphony Software Foundation. Also the foundation would be smaller and have less paid development staff; the bulk of development would be handled through external partners (likely represented on the board via these paid memberships. Foundation staff (more on the order of 5 or so) would be responsible for foundation management, fundraising, community management, and technical steering. This could also include possible paid staff for ODK maintenance, but this and ODK feature development are more likely to be performed by consortium partners. Technical Steering Committees (TSCs) would be established for each of the ODK projects (e.g. Aggregate, JavaRosa, ODK 2.0, Collect, etc.).
Essentially, the foundation would provide a mechanism for a consortium of invested companies providing ODK services (and possibly features) to come to a consensus-based agreement on the priority of common maintenance and new feature goals, as well as determine what companies and/or developers will then work on their implementation.
D.2. GOVERNANCE
The new ODK Foundation will have a Board of Directors which also elects officers (Chairperson and/or President, Secretary, Treasurer). Unlike B.2, the board would not be self-perpetuating; rather a large number of seats would be determined by paid annual sponsorship (limit 1 sponsored board seat per individual company/institution). Board seats could come and go as companies pay or fail to renew their sponsorship, respectively. The board would be responsible for legal and fiscal authority and also serve as the overall project management committee for ODK, with final authority over all ODK decisions. Non- fiscally sponsored board seats could be determined by a variety of techniques, including nomination by the fiscally-sponsored board members or directly by some definition of voting members of the greater ODK community (example contributors, donors, users, etc.). Individual ODK Project TSCs would be populated by key contributors, determined by current PMC and community input. With the foundation itself having a small staff these TSCs would primarily consist of non-foundation contributors.
D.3. TECHNICAL ROADMAP
Each ODK Project’s TSC would be responsible for proposing periodically updated (e.g. once per year) roadmaps for their projects, based on input from the Board and the community. The board would have final approval over the TSCs; they could provide feedback and a request for modification by the TSCs, or ultimately overrule the TSCs (with obvious ramifications). In this model the consortium companies have more potential say in this through their paid representation on the board. This could also increase the level of influence that these companies’ (paid) users have in the overall ODK Roadmap, due to the consortium’s incentive to be responsive to them. It could also however potentially decrease the say that free independent users of ODK have (to the extent that their interests might diverge from users of for- fee services).
D.4. FUNDING
As the foundation is smaller in size than Note B, and would also have paid board seats, it would need less direct funding, and thus would seek funding from a (possible subset) of the options listed in B.4, including grants, pay-for-feature development, and individual donations. Fundraising needs could depend on the annual board membership fee price and the number of participating companies; conversely the annual membership fee might change depending on the level of fundraising success.
As stated above, one funding source would be paid sponsorship, which also would allowing direct naming of a Board Member (limited to 1 per company). This would be an annual sponsorship fee TBD based on input from the board and interested companies. The fees could alternatively be structured as a percentage of ODK-related revenue or a flat fee / user of each company (with some minimum yearly).
The purpose of fees and other fundraising would be to support foundation staff, engage in fundraising, and possibly for ODK maintenance (either via foundation staff developer or contracted back to one or more of the consortium members), as well as external feature development (this could be bid for by foundation consortium members or assigned via consensus).
D.5. COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
As with previous notes, the foundation and TSCs should seek regular feedback and input from the greater ODK community. TSCs should be regularly published, features can be voted on etc. As noted above in D.3 there would be clearly more direct input from companies willing to pay for foundation support and the accompanying board seat, and thus their paying user base might have more secondary input than perhaps in other models.
(I've slept since then, too!)