[Theforum] Corporate sponsorship?

Tara Cleveland tara at taracleveland.com
Wed May 22 13:44:29 CDT 2002


I agree with you both here... We already do have some forms of corporate
"sponsorship" but I also think there is a slippery slope to allowing
corporate sponsors to dictate what we say, or at least the tone of evolt. If
we rely primarily on corporate sponsorship for the money/software/bandwidth
that evolt requires to exist, it becomes much easier for those corporations
to lean on evolt to change message/tone/policy to match their interests. I'm
not saying that present sponsors do this now, or even that future sponsors
necessarily will - but I do think it is something we should keep in mind -
or maybe more than in mind - in policy - specifically laid out. So perhaps
we should publicize the EthicsCode for sponsorship. We could also expand it
to say that we should limit corporate sponsorship to certain things (like
subsidizing bandwidth or donating software or whatever else we decide is
okay) and try other avenues of funding before accepting corporate money,
thereby putting a priority on getting money from the membership and
encouraging other methods of fundraising. This would allay the fear that
evolt will turn into a non-community with a corporate agenda, but still
allow some forms of funding/sponsorship/involvement from corporate entities.

Whadda ya think?

Tara

--
business --> http://www.taracleveland.com
blog --> http://www.taracleveland.com/personal
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
Imagination encircles the world." - Einstein

> From: javier velasco <javier at nurun.cl>
> Reply-To: theforum at lists.evolt.org
> Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 09:05:47 -0400
> To: theforum at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: Re: [Theforum] Corporate sponsorship?
>
>
> keep in mind that the MAIN reason why evolt.org was formed was to enable
> developers to have a place free of corporate sponsors
>
>
>
and

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

-------------------- Start of message text --------------------

Certainly that was a major reason. Other people may differ on

1) Whether it was the main reason (another major reason was to retain the
rights over content we produce)

2) What 'free from' means. We already have corporate sponsored software
(Chilisoft for one) and corporate sponsored community members (John Dowdell
for one), and unless we're pay commercial rates, we have corporate
sponsored bandwidth. If 'free from' means 'not accepting any support from'
we're already there, sorry, and have been for a very, very long time. If it
means 'not allowing corporate sponsorship to dictate what we say' then
we're OK and that won't change.

Cheers
Martin




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