Organizations sponsoring non-staff

[courtneyr-dev]

Organizations, such as my employer, GoDaddy, sponsor non-staff members contributing to WordPress. We do this because we know the importance of contributing. We hold no obligation for the recipient to acknowledge our sponsorship, as in some cases, they wish to keep the details private. Additionally, these folks may receive partial funding from multiple backers.

How do we handle this when organizations supporting Five for the Future are compared? This does matter in some areas, such as https://wordpress.org/hosting.

[jeffpaul]

@courtneyr-dev I think this is already handled somehow, see https://profiles.wordpress.org/lukecarbis/ for a view of how that's shown (noting it doesn't necessarily break down how different companies might sponsor different amounts of time to different teams, but does show some breakdown that helps with what you're asking)

[courtneyr-dev]

Interesting, I missed seeing that come in. How does that work when editing our profiles and listing the breakdown?

[gusaus]

I'm probably misunderstanding the question, but it seems like Drupal's contribution credit system could provide some inspiration (and possibly open source code) for making the Five for the Future a bit more effective, inclusive, and transparent.

Especially if we can collaborate and pool resources on some of the ways Drupal is extending:

Over time, we hope to expand the algorithm to cover a much broader representation of contributions, including those that take place outside of Drupal.org.

In particular there are three broad categories of contribution we want to be able to measure, with many specific contribution activities within each:

• Drupal.org activities, such as documentation edits or translations.
• Non-drupal.org activities, such as event management, and community organizing.
• Financial activities in support of the project, beyond just contributions to the global DA.

Seems like the Dashboard Initiative (see this related Sustainability discussion) could be a key component as Drupal (and/or other open source tools) are referenced in @courtneyr-dev's Project Health Dashboards post and could be leveraged and extended.

[estelaris]

The Drupal contribution system is interesting. I think it would solve many issues for contributors that are self-sponsored, like not being picked up by a sponsor because their profile already says that contributor is sponsored without clarification by whom.
I would also allow us to quantify how much work is being sponsored by each organization and can provide more honest and real statistics.

[gusaus]

As longtime contributor and community member, I can verify the crediting system + marketplace have been effective tools for increasing, incentivizing, and diversifying contributions by individuals and organizations.

The following are recent examples of projects and programs that were enabled by this type of system:

• https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/introducing-the-bounty-program
• https://www.drupal.org/about/starshot
• https://www.drupal.org/innovation/pitchburgh-2023

Considering there are multiple orgs and individuals contributing and supporting WordPress and Drupal (both members), I think we could leverage the Open Website Alliance to facilitate knowledge share and collaboration (see this related discussion WordPress/sustainability#41).