POCO RFC

This is a request for comment about the future of POCO project*.

The POCO project team is soliciting feedback on the project itself, the development model, maintenance, releases and any other topic regarding the POCO project state of the affairs.

The current state of the project has some troubling aspects associated with it that we would like to rectify as soon as possible. In order to do that, we need your help. The development of POCO, as it currently stands, mostly depends on voluntary contributions. An obvious consequence is that we are not able to realize the plans as we would like to. While we are definitely grateful for any contribution, we feel that a project like POCO deserves better than that. Also, contributing a chunk of code is not the end of a contribution process. As written in a recent blog post, there’s much more to it and someone has to take further steps in order for the contribution to find it’s way into a release.

Given that the project already has a significant number of commercial users, we would especially like to encourage response from those entities in order to learn whether there is any interest in setting up an entity or a relationship overseeing the development of POCO. An example of “entity” would be a non-profit organization (e.g. Mozilla Foundation). An example of a relationship would be a sponsorship of POCO project or commercial support contract set up in a way similar to that of SQLite or a membership association similar to the SQLite Consortium. Additionally, we also encourage individuals, hobbyists and open source projects developers to respond with ideas and suggestions regarding this issue. Last but not least, the POCO Project page has a PayPal donate link, so please consider donating to the project as well.

The bottom line (and the reason for this request for comments) is, we would like to be able to have someone officially and professionally responsible for POCO project dedicating it certain amount of time every business day. This would initially likely be one person on a part-time basis, but depending on the interest, responses and establishment of said entities/relationships, it would eventually grow to full-time and more people. Needless to say, this would significantly improve the quality of the framework, the speed at which bugs are being fixed and releases published.

Here are few questions:

* Would you be willing to support POCO financially?
* Would you be willing to contribute the time of your employees?
* Are you in favor of non-profit entity and under what conditions would you join?
* Would you be willing to buy commercial support?
* Do you have any suggestions about the future of POCO project?

We feel that this is crucial for the future of POCO. If you like what we do and benefit from it, please consider responding. POCO is and shall remain free as both speech and beer. Regardless of the responses, the current project team shall continue doing its best to keep the project alive and healthy.

Thank you for your time.

POCO Project Team

* Anyone interested in any way, shape or form is encouraged to respond, publicly or privately. Should you require confidentiality, it will be fully guaranteed. In the latter case, send your comments to poco at appinf.com.