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21 changes: 21 additions & 0 deletions RECOGNITION.md
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# Recognizing contributions

The most common form of individual contribution to the Flux project is
time and effort. Thus, the project recognises people who reported
issues, fixed bugs, wrote documentation, reviewed pull requests, and
so on, by thanking them on the Flux website.
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Suggested change
so on, by thanking them on the Flux website.
so on, by thanking them [on the Flux website](https://fluxcd.io/#:~:text=Made%20possible%20by%20our%20contributors).

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@hiddeco hiddeco Oct 20, 2023

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These are contributors, not sponsors. Sponsors would e.g. have a dedicated page or other place where they would be highlighted.

Ah, misread. I think we should either add a ref to the section or just refer to "the contributor section on the homepage of the Flux website".

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👍 Yeah I could be more precise here

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Do we need to specify this in the doc?

I would suggest adding a sponsored by section on the homepage of fluxcd.io, We already have an adopters section now, featuring adopters logos. I think it's fair to add a similar section for sponsors too. Also probably easy since we have the code for adopters. Note that helm.sh has sponsor logos on the home page too.


However, there are other ways to support the Flux project, especially
as an organisation, and we would like to be generous in expressing
gratitude to anyone that helps.

Here are other kinds of contribution that could be recognized:
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This document should include details on the ways we will recognize such contributions. A dedicated section on the website near the individual contributors' avatar gallery is one option. A dedicated page is another one.

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@scottrigby scottrigby Jun 18, 2024

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See #321 (comment)

But again, I suggest we don't need to specify the exact details of this in this doc. This would allow us to merge as-is, whereas now this PR has been open since last year. We can always give more specifics if we really feel we need to spell it out here.


- committing team members' time to the project (e.g., someone working
a day a week on Flux)
- donating cloud platform credits or a free account to be used for
automation
- sponsoring the employment of contributors and maintainers

The processes around sponsorship are explained in
[SPONSORSHIP.md](SPONSORSHIP.md).
68 changes: 68 additions & 0 deletions SPONSORSHIP.md
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# Sponsorship

An obvious way to contribute to the Flux project is to spend time on
things that need to be done. But not everyone can set aside time that
way as an individual, or commit team members' time as an organisation.

We would like to recognise contributions of money and material (e.g.,
cloud platform credits), whether it is directly to the project or
through a sponsorship program. And we would like to let people know
there are ways to support the Flux project other than devoting time
and effort directly.

This document describes how the sponsorship part of that works.

A sponsorship program is a way for organisations to contribute money
(or a near equivalent, e.g., cloud platform credits) to help the Flux
project. The organisers of the program use the money to pay for things
that directly benefit the Flux project, for instance paying employees
that work as Flux maintainers.

The Flux project does not run its own sponsorship program, but other
people can, and we vet those who wish to be recognised. The programs
are listed on the Flux website, and sponsors are recognised on the
website amongst other kinds of contributions.

## Recognition of sponsorships

The Flux website shows contributions made via a sponsorship
program. The Flux maintainers agree a reasonable wording with the
organisers of a sponsorship program. For example, a program might have
different levels of contributions ("gold", "silver", "bronze"), and to
recognise larger sponsorships, the program organisers would want the
level to be mentioned.

The maintenance of active sponsorships is done through pull requests
to the Flux website repository. It's up to sponsorship program
organisers to make sure their sponsors are represented accurately.

## Sponsorship programs

It's important to establish trust between the Flux community and the
organisers of a sponsorship program. Mainly, we need to check that
sponsors' money will be put to the benefit of the project.

There is an initial exchange in which the program organisers and the
Flux maintainers agree what benefits are being provided and how
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I wonder whether we need or should weave this into the GOVERNANCE.md document so that sponsorship is more tied into the overall governance of the project and doesn't live a life in isolation from everything else.

The least this document should do is make clear what it means by "Flux maintainers". I suppose this should mean core maintainers.

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@makkes do you agree we should include all Flux maintainers - automated from the source of truth here - not only core (fluxcd/flux2)?

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Yes I do.

sponsors shall be recognised. This is reviewed between the Flux
maintainers and program organisers every half a year, to check it is
still accurate.

In the spirit of being generous with our gratitude, we assume good
faith in how sponsorship funds are spent. In any case, we would expect
programs to be accountable to their sponsors, who will require their
own assurances that their money is put to good use.

## What can and cannot be a benefit of sponsorship

With respect to the Flux project itself, sponsorship does not confer
anything outside these:

- recognition on the website
- social capital of being able to mention you are a sponsor

In particular, the Flux project does not grant sponsors any elevated
status in decision-making, and does not guarantee extra attention to
e.g., proposed features from sponsors. Sponsorship programs can of
course grant benefits that are in the power of the organisers to give,
like support from their own employees.