It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page. This page is a proposal intended for Board review and discussion.
This page contains information about how commercial entities can sponsor Fedora through direct contribution of services or funding, and what options are available for acknowledging those contributions.
Introduction
Fedora has thousands of regular contributors who give freely of their time and efforts on a continual basis. Sponsorship by commercial entities must never be seen as disenfranchising or sidelining the work done by our many volunteers around the globe. For this reason, only very substantial direct contributions of services, mainly those which empower our volunteers to work more effectively and collaborate more easily, are recognized beyond simple gratitude such as a written "thank you."
Sponsorship generally occurs in one of two ways:
- One-time sponsorship (such as funding of part or all of an event, or a hardware donation)
- Recurring sponsorship (such as continuing service donation)
The following are not considered sponsorship of the Fedora Project:
- Donations of personnel in cases where Fedora Project personnel do not have substantial input in the performance management process. Sponsorship allows Fedora to have substantial control over implementation details, such as where hardware is located, how a service is configured, or how funding is used. To be eligible for sponsorship, a personnel donation would require at least the ability for the Fedora Project to manage personnel efforts; make performance and retention decisions; and otherwise administer the position(s) in a way wholly discernible from other volunteer work.
- Providing a public mirror of Fedora software. Many educational, commercial, and public institutions provide public mirrors of Fedora software already, not only as a service to the free and open source software (FOSS) community, but because they realize tangible benefits from the distribution of FOSS.