I have to add that this conflict of interest exists. When the new website was created and service providers were asked to provide success stories we communicated with the foundation that we principally don’t do so for privacy reasons. We are known by our customers to strictly adhere to this principle and we will not concede on this matter. We also know that MBSolutions was removed from the service page because there obviously was no way to deal with this conflict.
From an outside perspective those rules are handled at least intransparently. Let’s take a look:
Almost half of the success stories are disabled. This is probably due to violation of rules
Keep up to date
You must:
keep your company information and existing success stories up to date,
Looking at service providers there seem to be listed some that never did submit a success story. This is probably in violation of at least rules
Submit Success Stories
To stay listed, you must provide at least one success story within 6 months.
Just to summarize: there seems to be currently a quite substantial mismatch between published rules and reality.
The current handling of the rules is at least intransparent apart from the fact that they are for sure inflexible, unfair and discouraging in our case.
This is because we changed the success story format and we requested the service providers to rewrite them but they did not do.
This is the case, so probably we need to take and action to make this fair for everyone that are following the rules.
I think there is always something to lear from discouraging comments like this one.
May I ask you which kind of rules will be fair and encouraging for your case?
Do you think giving some money to the foundation will be something fair to compensate the fact that you can not share success stories?
So it seems that it is correct to assume that those success stories do not follow the rule
keep your existing success stories up to date,
Thanks, very much appreciated.
I am quite inline with the post of Albert. It should be an easy procedure to be listed on the service page (JFTR like it was before). Abuse like redirecting to unrelated sites etc. can easily be prevented. It should not be restricted to some sort of forced contribution or giving money. Motivation is never produced by restrictions, but by a positive and welcoming attitude. If you feel proud of being part of a project this will be the best motivation at all. You gave some notions of contributions already. They will grow as soon as you allow people to get a respected and valued part of the project. Finally it is a question about being inclusive vs. exclusive.
I see that the dolibar project follows a more inclusive policy but they destinguish by prefered partners (which follow the rules) and non prefered partners where there is no requirement.
Does it sound like a reasonable solution to be more inclusive (while keeping the quality)?
To stop the discussion about the Foundation selling anything. The Foundation is not a commercial entity and so it can not sale anything. The only ways that it can get money is by donation or if it adds a fees to the supporters.
https://bugs.tryton.org/issue10035
Maybe removing the obviously wrong entries before ‘rewriting to new structure’?
The more I think about it the more I like the approach from @albert
Then those companies should be requested to become supporters with an annual fee. Then we should tell them that to advertize on the foundation page they should become supporters.
Some issues I have with that:
What about other supporters? Should they also pay? And what about people in less fortunate countries?
I don’t like “pay to win” games, if they want to benefit from an exposition (and that’s why they are asking to be listed) then they should earn it
Are there many companies interested in a listing whose quality is questionable?
As everybody knows each other: MBSolution has knowledge in Tryton, they are trusted from my side
A small hint - on the donation page nobody is listed - this list should be up to date to say thanks to donators.
About the success stories: I think (while writing) we should search for a way to publish kind of ‘good news’ about the project. A nantic event, a use case of GNU Health in the world, a new module on pypi, a finished project and also a single installation like the one from @herrdeh is a good news for Tryton - and all are success stories by its own. Possibly we should think about a simple way to publish news about projects without the burden of formality.
On the subject of service providers: This should never be dependent on a contribution. Someone who implements projects on behalf of a client is by definition a service provider. If one wanted to check it, the Foundation would have to obtain confirmation from the client. And we have the Board of the Foundation, which can decide in case of doubt.
Donation and highlighted donators are good for that. A donation is not tied to anything but money. And if someone donates a lot, they also get a big mention - but nothing more.
Support is a service in itself, why should you pay for it? I prepared the stand at the Linux Days Chemnitz. I do that because I want to support the project. I would like it to be mentioned, but even if not, I don’t care. I hope that Tryton will become better known in our region and that I may also benefit commercially from it. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is a form of support. Payment is already done in this case
