Sponsorship from the Foundation

[saivann]

Live preview: (merged)
bitcointalk thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=470319.0

There has been some discussion about sponsoring bitcoin.org and the Foundation has been willing to offer a 6 month sponsorship as a part of their grant process before March 1st. This sponsorship would be used to pay for server expenses, translation bounties, or any other significant work done on bitcoin.org, and could potentially be renewed over time.

[luke-jr]

Not sure why it's necessary to include sponsorship in the footer of every page, but this is probably better than than current unexplained link to the Foundation website.

[wbnns]

@saivann - thanks for putting this together. are there any other requirements other than putting the logo/text in the footer in order for bitcoin.org to qualify for the sponsorship?

[saivann]

@luke-jr This was requested by the Foundation. IMO, that is often how sponsorship banners are displayed so that seemed fair to me.

@gwb3 So long as there's no issue / opposition, that's mostly it. The Foundation is only asking for basic reports about what has been achived with the sponsorship just to make sure there's no mismanagement.

[luke-jr]

@saivann Usually it's just a list of sponsors on one page, not the footer of every page.

[saivann]

@luke-jr I certainly agree that it's very prominent in this case due to the logo, but to my experience, it is common to have a sponsorship link displayed in the footer. In any case, I am not opposed to displaying this differently at a later time in the event that the sponsorship is renewed and the Foundation agrees with the change. Meanwhile, changing this today would probably cause too much delays as we would miss the current grant.

[schildbach]

I would prefer to keep the noise level at a minimum. To me the current placement of the sponsor feels too prominent -- how can it be more important than the Network Status for example? I suggest moving sponsors to a separate page. If that's not possible at least decrease font/logo size until it's smaller than the more important parts of the footer.

[saivann]

@schildbach @luke-jr I will just ask the Foundation to comment here since it's part of their requirements. I am available to make changes and live previews.

[saivann]

@schildbach @luke-jr Got an email from Jon and this currently seems like we should take it or leave it. Originally, the Foundation was asking for much more visibility (e.g. http://fedoraproject.org/) , and they don't seem interested in revisiting this. However I can set the same font-size to the bottom links (Alerts - Legal - About bitcoin.org)

[luke-jr]

For my part, I was mostly suggesting rather than objecting. Go ahead and merge it, but IMO (again, mere suggestion) after they approve the grant.

[schildbach]

Ok thanks for clearing this up. I was just expressing my opinion but cannot judge on how important the sponsoring is for the page.