Create a sponsoring page to be inserted on the website. This page should show:

• What the FPA is
• What are the sponsoring options, tiers, etc.
• How can one donate to the project
• Current sponsors
• Who to contact

Also, we need a clear, unified "tiers" system for sponsoring pages like github sponsors or opencollective with:

• one-time and recurrent donations
• what's for you if you participate

"I have attached my bank statements for my travel expenses to fosdem from England of £24 overnight in London, £78 for eurostar, and €101 for 3 nights at the hostel.

At an exchange rate of 1.12 this is about €216. The sort code and account number to send any money to are on the statements."

I mean why not, I'd wear it especially on fairs. (mostly to piss off the Solidworks and Autodesk Vars :) )_
Blender example:
https://store.blender.org/
There are complete companies who can do this for someone, but they will probably take a big chunk of money from it.
I am not sure who Blender uses, I assume they do not print there own t-shirts.
I also have no experience with merch, so cannot really help in that direction.
But maybe start with a sticker until the workflow flows.
The book from issue 9 is also merch I realize, but I was more thinking about the stickers and t-shirts.

Blog content payment to Paul J. Tadrous - US$100

Paying FOSDEM travel grant of 462 EUR (500 USD) to Ajinkya Dahale, according to https://fpa.freecad.org/programs/fosdem-travel-grants

Create a page for the FreeCAD homepage explaining what the FPA is

Creating an issue to track request of payout for hosting costs from November 2020 to April 2022, inclusive. Total cost $802.31.

The FPA has created a Development Fund (https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=71849) and awarded a first grant (https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=71842), but the grant application process has not been made public.

The lack of a public process reflects poorly on the FPA "as a community-owned project that functions transparently".

The lack of a public process also limits the pool of potential applicants.

Payment to @adrianinsaval as a FPADF grant to sustain his work on release packaging, as approved by FPA members on 2023.07.12

Need to check:

• What is the process to follow (#5 (comment))
• What are the technical requirements, ie. what do we need to change to our packaging process
• Are there any fees? If yes, are there exceptions for open-source projects?

We need a system to keep track of recurrent donators, and also to note and pick who deserves a proper sponsor attribution. we are doing this manually for the time being, but it is error prone and might not be practical in the future

Related to #15

Problem: Hard to set up a custom amount.
See https://jsfiddle.net/captainapollo/atgycd2s/

Hello. Located in the US. Attempted to donate and got this error message. I ended up contributing via credit card instead.

Payment of € 157,42 according to https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/tsv_pub/tarif_f.htm for updating of administrators list at https://kbopub.economie.fgov.be/kbopub/toonondernemingps.html?lang=en&ondernemingsnummer=781867807

Register the FreeCAD logo as a trademark, to leverage more power to for example go against fake FreeCAD being sold on webshops like Apple or Microsoft

As per decision of the FPA members, the FPA will pay for the restaurant where FreeCAD community members gathered prior to the FreeCAD day. Total value: 405.40 €

https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/join/
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?p=605279#p605279

• Official, press-ready logo and logo + text, white, dark and mono versions
• Flyer / folder aimed at companies
• Flyer / folder aimed at institutions / universities / schools
• Badges/graphical widget for sponsors to display on their websites
• Create a logo for the FPA
• Finalize logo sheet (make it easily usable by other orgs)
• Make it easily findable by other orgs

This is an issue to collect the remaining additional EUR 455.27 spent on notary fees for the FPA creation

FreeCAD event @ FOSDEM 2023

Purpose: Organise a FreeCAD event day, as a side event to FOSDEM 2023

FOSDEM is a well-known FOSS developers meeting, held once a year in Brussels, Belgium. It attracts developers from the whole world for a week-end in Brussels. The even is packed with talks, workshops, and is a great place to meet other developers. Many projects use FOSDEM as an opportunity for their developers to meet physically.

The whole FOSDEM is also free to attend and open to anybody, no booking required. It usually brings a lot of people from around Brussels.

FreeCAD develpers Yorik, Sliptonic, KKremitzki, vejmarie already met at FOSDEM 2019, it was a great experience and led to many new ideas. We would like to do it again and interest more FreeCAD developers and community members to join.

FOSDEM itself happens on 4th and 5th february 2023. We propose to make the FreeCAD event on friday february 3rd, 2023, so folks can participate to the FreeCAD day and still enjoy the rest of FOSDEM.

Before the FreeCAD day

For who has already arrived in Brussels, we could meet on thursday night in a cool place with food and drink to meet up, share some stories. It could be just a food bar or a fuller belgian experience such as a typical restaurant. It will be at t'Kelderke from 19h

FreeCAD day

We will look for suitable locations, one good location would be the Brussels hackerspace, but I (Yorik) am not sure it will be available as it uses to host a Debian event during FOSDEM. Otherwise FOSDEM itself might help us to find a space.

The event could be formatted as an unconference and what happens in it be decided by the participants on the day of the event. However, since not everybody will be able to attend, it might be useful to prepare time slots that can be filled in advance too.

Anybody is free to propose an activity to fill the time slots:

Thursday February 2nd, 2023

Friday February 3rd, 2023

Saturday and Sunday February 4th and 5th, 2023

FOSDEM, no specific FreeCAD activities scheduled, but FreeCAD community members are welcome to meet/gather around

Recording Should there be talks recorded for others to see? How?

FOSDEM talks

FOSDEM itself will feature an open CAD/CAM/hardware devroom, where FreeCAD-related talks can be proposed (the proposal period is between november 5th and december 15th). We also encourage FreeCAD community members to propose FreeCAD-related talks there.

FOSDEM booth

Finally, FOSDEM offers to have a boot/stand in the main lobby. If there is enough interest and volunteers to maintain it. We could also print some t-shirts and stickers to sell and give there.

Tasks to be done (add yours and add your name if you wish to help with any)

• Announce travel grants
• Find a place to do the meeting ( @yorikvanhavre ) - Hackerspace Brussels likely occupied that day by Debian hackaton. Found and booked at Ateliers des tanneurs
• Organize food/coffee for the meeting ( @yorikvanhavre ) - Available from the Tanneur's own food provider at 9€/person - Need an estimate of the number of persons attending
• Print t-shirts?
• Print stickers?
• Print pencils? cancelled
• 3D-print key hangers? cancelled
• Print poster to be put at the event day
• Enquire about having a FreeCAD stand/booth at FOSDEM ( @yorikvanhavre ) - Too late, but Open Toolchain foundation has one and propses to share with us. Needs volunteers!
• Find & organize a restaurant for thursday evening ( @yorikvanhavre ) - at t'kelderke on thursday 02/02, at 19h - https://restaurant-het-kelderke.be/en
• Create a chat room (matrix, telegram, forum?) for attendees to meet and schedule
• Create a list of confirmed attendees to estimate food, t-shirts, thurday night booking...

Reimbursement of the printing of 200 FreeCAD stickers for FOSDEM and the FreeCAD day. Total 47.55€, paid by Yorik

Reimburse @chennes US$267 for blog.freecad.org hosting costs 2023-01-04 to 2024-01-04 (WordPress.com Receipt #75761639).

Payment of 390€+21% VAT = 471.90€ for the Gamay room at Atelier des Tanneurs on february 3rd, 2023

After users have clicked a download button on the FreeCAD homepage, they should be redirected to a "thank you!" page which suggests donation and/or other ways to interact, get help and collaborate to the project.

The donation suggestion should have a drop menu showing options, but with at least one easy, one-click donation (check how others do it)

Reimbursement of FreeCAD t-shirts. Total for 30 T-shirts: 354.35€ + 21€VAT = 428.76€ = 14.30 each
15 t-shirts were sold at FreeCAD day @ 15€ = 225€
Rest to be reimbursed = 428.76 - 225 = 204.76 €

While there is a statute that requires two thirds agreement to admit a new member,
there is no description of how a member of the community is to be considered for
membership.

This means each potential member is considered on an ad-hoc basis.

There should be a standard process for adding members.

Need to check:

• What is the process to follow
• What are the technical requirements, ie. what do we need to change to our packaging process
• Are there any fees? If yes, are there exceptions for open-source projects?

The FreeCAD twitter handle is owned by a person who has no relation with FreeCAD or, as far as we can see, with CAD. It is also almost inactive (last post in 2019, only 3 posts since 2010, 20 followers only).

We should try to reach to its owner and ask him to give it to us. I imagine the owner must be constantly annoyed by people thinking it's the official FreeCAD account. But:

• Direct messages are disabled, and the owner never replied to our mentions (both from me and @FreeCADNews). Although negotiating directly with the owner would be best, we have no way to do that.
• Twitter's inactive account policies prevent us from claiming the account just because it's inactive
• Twitter's trademark policy might allow us to obtain the handle. However, since the current owner is not trying to impersonate FreeCAD, it is not guaranteed that this will work. This case seems similar to ours.
• We could in the meantime also verify the @FreeCADNews account

Payment of EUR 259.09 for the coffee/food during the FreeCAD day on February 3rd, 2023, as part of the pre-approved USD 1000 budget for the FreeCAD day

Fact2023034 The FreeCAD project ass (1).pdf

By decision of the FPA members on 2022.11.15, grant the sum of USD 1000 to @realthunder (https://forum.freecadweb.org/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=12167) ) as an incentive and recognition for his general work on FreeCAD:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=72792

As decided by FPA members, the FPA will support the costs of the visa procedures that Ajinkya had to engage in order to try to come to Brussels for the FreeCAD day + FOSDEM

Value: 370€ according to attached receipts

Paying FOSDEM travel grant of 250 EUR to Aleksander Sadowski, according to https://fpa.freecad.org/programs/fosdem-travel-grants

As asked by donating community members and in agreement with FPA members, a further grant of USD 500 is being made by the FPA to jnxd to complete his crowdfunding campaign.

Note: This is not part of the original 1000 USD grant, but an independent, additional donation made because some forum members donated that amount to the FPA specially asking to use it to complete jnxd's crowdfunding campaign.

Follow-up of #19

US$500 to @chennes re FOSDEM Travel Grant program.

• add 10% BountySource Fee.

Just because why not :)

We need to find an online service that accepts non-profit accounts, supports different currencies and can transfer to a SEPA bank account for not too big fees...

By decision of the FPA members on 2022.09.26, grant the sum of USD 1000 to @AjinkyaDahale ( jnxd ) as an incentive and recognition for his work on Bspline tools:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=71130&p=628543

• Revise the text for 0.20
• Format for printing (research automatic ways to do that)
• Research print-on-demand platforms

ATM I am trying to apply for membership in this organisation: https://bauen-digital.ch/de/

see disscusion here: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=66771#p609285

For this I might need a Postaddress

cheers Bernd

Value $500, to be paid by PayPal. Proof of purchase sent via email

We have 2 free mailboxes with the freecad.org domain

Renewal of freecad.org and freecadforum.org + 2 additional mailboxes for one year, total US$45.52

2023 Gandi_order_20230712_106440175.pdf

People are beginnig to donate everywhere. We should make a "thank you" page where all the payment services can redirect after the payment is done, where we can thank people, add additional info, etc

2023 budget link leads to 2022 budget page :(

Paying FOSDEM travel grant of 462 EUR (500 USD) to Keith Sloane, according to https://fpa.freecad.org/programs/fosdem-travel-grants

A CA certificate is a certificate issued by an authority (as opposed to a self-signed certificate), that certifies your identity. CA certificates are commonly used on websites, but can also be used to sign applications. CA certifcates can usually be purchased in different flavours (individual or corporate, with or without subdomains). It costs between USD 200 and 350 a year.

Note Linux Appimages are typically signed with gpg keys, and Apple installers with Apple developer IDs. So a CA certificate would basically only be of use to sign Windows packages. So purchasing a CA certificate would have two uses for the FPA:

• Certify the freecad.org website (and all of its subdomains)
• Sign the windows installer packages

A corporate, subdomain-enabled CA certificate would cost around USD 250 / year, would display "The FreeCAD project association" as the owner when someone requests security details at freecad.org, and would make the FreeCAD Windows installer signed by the FPA.

Microsoft recommends purchasing a certificate from their "partners" but they are more pricey at about USD 350 for a corporate certificate. Gandi.net, where the freecad.org domain is registered, also sells CA corp certifcates for around USD 250. Description of Pro certificates

Certificates come as SSL certificates which can be directly used with websites, but can also easily be converted to the pfx format (other tutorial) which is used by the signtool.exe tool to sign Windows executables.

The certificate comes as a SSL certificate and can be immediately used on websites, and can

Paying FOSDEM travel grant of 462 EUR (500 USD) to Kurt Kremitzki, according to https://fpa.freecad.org/programs/fosdem-travel-grants

Paying FOSDEM travel grant of 408,30 EUR (441.93 USD) to ickby, according to https://fpa.freecad.org/programs/fosdem-travel-grants

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FPA#donations