pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> -Lawrence suggested that we establish ourselves as a non-profit so that
> we can receive direct funding....
> Are we willing to allocate funds towards this end?  And if so, when?
> Now?  Or after we have already completed a portion of the project?  And
> let’s find out how much this would cost.

If the PC institute will take in the money as our NPO umbrella and insure
that 100% goes to this project, that saves us time and money and hassles
(if NPO establishment wasn't a hassle why would we contract it out?) and
would be both fine by me and my preference as well.

> -Chad asked what counts as billable work.  Hmmm…  Because I am not
> familiar with what goes into the tech work, perhaps the techies should
> list the kind of work you will be doing – specifically that which would
> count as billable.

As head test curmudgeon, I will set up (free) and administer (billable,
once it gets complex enough to need real admin attention) the tracking
database, provide some testing FAQ and guideline info for the
dev/tester/user community (free), and coordinate and perform QA/testing
work (billable).
That's where I'm at now anyhow.

> And I suggest that we make a project plan with
> deadlines,

Milestones might be a better approach.  Outcome or performance based. 
There will be a fair bit of free/volunteer work here so IMO "deadlines"
are unrealistic; also milestones are more
software-development-appropriate.

>... all track our hours, and then only get paid after we
> fulfill our responsibilities – at increments in the project plan (i.e.
> after stage 1).  Does this sound fair?

Fair enough!

Correspondence on this list, including design work and whatever else will
be free from me.

> -I like Lawrence’s wiki idea.  Can we incorporate a wiki into this
> project – both in the design project and as part of the resource itself?

A wiki or portions or pages thereof (or anything else) can be linked as a
resource from HG, certainly.
If a wiki were adequate for what we want to do with HG we'd be done
already - I assume we've decided a wiki won't do.  I certainly don't think
it will, not for the sort of plant and eventually guild DB we've been
discussing.

>...what is our relationship to PFAF?

Last I understood we were going to get some PFAF data under some kind of
acceptable open source license to jumpstart HG dataset.  Other than that,
afaik we are two separate entities that may choose to refer to each other.

>  If we
> chose to have some kind of license/copyright, what would be the
> intention?

Open source for HG is my intention - free as in freely available,
accessible and licensed so that it will stay that way.

> compensation for participants (Lawrence’s point) – so what is the
> course of action?

Well, we can use open source licenses, and we can get paid as/if/when we
get grants or other "free" money from entities that decide to support us
with money.  There's nothing in open source licensing that says people
creating it aren't allowed to be paid for their work!  It just says that
the result of their work is "free" as defined by open source approaches.

> -About Paula, she has collected a wealth of information on plant
> relations
hips in USDA zones 3, 4, and 5 – and she would like to
> contribute this information to the hg database.  She’ll write to us
> soon…

Great!

> -I feel like we should perhaps redefine our roles, responsibilities, etc.

See above for my short and concise take on mine.
I will also be participating in design conversations, including at a
development/tech level, for free.

> This will happen if we create a project plan, and devise what specific
> tasks we are responsible for.  Does anyone know how to use any project
> management software, that would be willing to help us?  I think this is
> top priority.

Needs to be open source cross-platform project management software if so.
Not my strong suit.  Most of that kind of software I've seen is more
trouble than it's worth, especially for small projects like this.
A good spreadsheet for timelines and milestones and so on may be adequate.

> -How can we integrate with what Lawrence is trying to achieve?  Would hg
> be a part of Lawrence’s larger database, or otherwise?

They can cross-reference each other in any case.

> -And finally, about sending a message to the pc lists, Jim wrote that we
> should not announce the funding publicly just yet – because it hasn’t
> been officially announced.  Does sending a message to the pc lists count
> as public announcement?  Probably not.

Er - it is a publicly available list with public archives.  If I do a
google search on

permaculture plant database funding

...the first several hits are from the permaculture list archives, October
2003, discussing this very project.

Grantors can be really picky as to announcements of their fundings.  Wish
I had thought of that reason when I was urging caution about announcing
immediately.
Please let's keep that in mind before excitedly posting thither and yon
that we got some money.  It can affect their willingness to give more, for
starters.

> p.s.  John, I don’t think we’ll be getting any contributions from
> Alison…but I’m definitely laughing out loud

Thanks...I guess...seen so much of people subbing to a list and
ignoring/deleting all the helpful info automatically sent to them on how
to configure and unsub that lately I won't put up with it silently.  There
are responsibilities in cyberspace - if they did similar to their credit
card company or phone company or best friends or spouse or whatever they
most likely wouldn't get away with it so why here?

Grrrrrrr.... ;-)




John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
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Design & Technology Services
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john@eco-living.net
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