User:RKent/Donations Proposal
Introduction
On November 18, 2013, I submitted a message on the tb-planning list, requesting:
- I would like to propose that for Thunderbird 31, we add a donation user interface and mechanism that requests an annual donation of $10 from users. This should be something that appears prominently once after the upgrade, and users have a choice to act/postpone/or ignore (until next major release).
Here I would like to give more details to that proposal, and submit this for formal approval by the governing body for the Thunderbird project.
Process for Approval
According to New Release and Governance Model, some of the processes for dealing with project issues and donations are described. In particular, the following is stated:
- Money generated by donations is to be used for engagement or other purposes. Donations are for general purposes. ... The module owners group at large decides by consensus money spending community propositions.
There is an additional governance body mentioned there, the "Release Drivers". That group has a number of defined roles, including overseeing "Business Development & Legal (with a veto right by paid Mozilla staff)." There is also mention specifically of a virtual sub-module with the following name and responsibility: "Business Development (BD): in-product partners inclusion & revenues" although I could not find any evidence that this module actually exists in the official Module definition wiki.
Any or all of those groups could claim responsibility for the approval of this proposal. I will try to engage everyone to cover all bases.
That means, based on the current list of people, that all of the following are involved in this decision process:
Thunderbird Module Owners and Peers:
David Bienvenu (:bienvenu), Mark Banner (:standard8), Blake Winton (:bwinton), Magnus Melin (:mkmelin), Mike Conley (:mconley), Siddharth Agarwal (:sid0), Joshua Cranmer (:jcranmer), Justin Wood (:callek), Jim Porter (:squib), Florian Quèze, Patrick Cloke (:clokep), Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn), Richard Marti (:paenglab) Josiah Bruner (:JosiahOne)
In addition to these Module Owners and Peers, the Release Teams adds a few additional names:
- Back End Integration Engineer: Irving Reid
- Quality Assurance: Ludovic Hirlimann
- Web Development: Andrei 'Sancus' Hajdukewycz
- Support: Roland Tanglao
- Release Engineering: John Hopkins
- Business Development & Legal: Jean-Baptiste Piacentino
So these are the people to whom this proposal will be submitted. The relevant Mozilla staff will need to decide, first if they support this proposal, and second, does the proposal need to be submitted for possible veto by other Mozilla staff.