= !MapGuide RFC 83 - Project Sponsorship =

This page contains an change request (RFC) for the !MapGuide Open Source project.
More !MapGuide RFCs can be found on the [wiki:MapGuideRfcs RFCs] page.


== Status ==

||RFC Template Version||(1.0)||
||Submission Date||August 25, 2009||
||Last Modified||Trevor Wekel [[Timestamp]]||
||Author||Trevor Wekel||
||RFC Status||draft||
||Implementation Status||under development||
||Proposed Milestone||2.2||
||Assigned PSC guide(s)||Trevor Wekel||
||'''Voting History'''||(vote date)||
||+1||||
||+0||||
||-0||||
||-1||||
||no vote|| ||

== Overview ==

This RFC details the uses, process, and benefits of project sponsorship for !MapGuide Open Source.

== Motivation ==

Project sponsorship is a key aspect to maintaining any open source project.  It gives the PSC funding to help move the project forward.  At the moment, !MapGuide Open Source is relying on donations of time from the community and the project steering committee.

This is working to some extent but many individuals can only donate part of their time.  This may be having an effect on the !MapGuide Open Source release cycle.  Crispin at !1Spatial recently posted a status inquiry on !MapGuide Internals list regarding the 2.1 release date:

>Please take this as a positive request for information!  The MapGuide 2.1 release was originally scheduled for July 2008, then  October 2008 and then moved to the current April 2008 (4 months late). 

Based on Crispin's information, !MapGuide 2.1 is more than a year behind schedule.  This is problematic.  Sponsorship funding would give the PSC a pool of funds to work with to help speed up the development and release lifecycle of !MapGuide Open Source.

== Proposed Solution ==

The following solution has been shamelessly compiled from the sponsorship pages of the GDAL, GRASS GIS, and OpenLayers projects.
 
Project sponsorship funding would be used for the following purposes:

 * Addressing bug reports - reproducing then fixing or passing on to another developer. 
 * Extending, and running the test suite. 
 * Compiling and managing appropriate data sets for testing.
 * Rental of hardware and/or virtual machines for a multi-platform build and test environment.
 * Improving documentation. 
 * Other improvements to the software. 
 * General user support on the mailing list. 



== Implications ==

!MapGuide will continue to grow and flourish as as nd grow as a 

== Test Plan ==

N/A

== Funding/Resources ==

Supplied by Autodesk