Add NixCon sponsorship tiers and process #95

infinisil · 2025-03-29T12:59:36Z

Already early in NixCon 2025 planning, we organisers reached consensus to make sponsoring possible again this year, after they were forgone entirely last year. We'd like to make the tickets be as close to free as possible, considering that this years location in Switzerland is a bit more expensive to stay at. With enough funds, we could even consider extras, like meals, stipends, etc.

This PR is the next step towards making that a reality, by defining the sponsorship tiers and process. As indicated in the constitution, both the @NixOS/steering committee and the @NixOS/foundation board need to approve this.

We'd like to get this approved as soon as possible, so we can put the tiers on the NixCon website (which is being worked on) and start receiving sponsorships. This way we can get an early idea of the available budget and plan for a better event.

The tiers proposed here were initially drafted by board members and later refined with feedback from the NixCon 2025 organisers. The process was drafted by me and @Lassulus.

Ping for the NixCon 2025 organisers for visibility: @ners @Nebucatnetzer @andir @zmberber @idabzo @ForsakenHarmony @john-rodewald @a-kenji @Lassulus @pinpox @picnoir @das-g @refroni @Ra33it0 @infinisil

infinisil · 2025-03-29T13:05:27Z

doc/nixcon.md

+- Board respondent: @infinisil or @ra33it0?
+- SC respondent: ???


This is a TODO, we need somebody from the board and the SC to be assigned to perform the below process, ideally also a deputy in case of absences.

I can act as a stand-in/deputy for the SC if Tom is for some reason unavailable.

Now listing @tomberek as SC respondent and @winterqt as SC respondent.

Furthermore, I'm listing @Ra33it0 as board respondent and me as a deputy.

das-g

End complete sentences with a full stop (.).

doc/nixcon.md

infinisil · 2025-03-29T13:19:18Z

@das-g Thanks, addressed, though I'd like to avoid all non-substantive feedback here, since a lot of people are involved. We will be able to non-substantively improve the presentation before putting it on the website in any case 😉

@infinisil

Hashed out initially by @infinisil and @Ra33it0, subsequently refined with the NixCon 2025 organisers.

doc/nixcon.md

winterqt · 2025-03-29T17:50:03Z

doc/nixcon.md

+
+### How to sponsor
+
+Send an email to [email protected] (which will forward to both the Nix Steering Committee and the NixOS Foundation board) with:


Would it make sense to use @nixcon.org for this? Or maybe not, since NixCon is official?

Could be done, both domains are official, but I wouldn't know how that's configured, and we already have a working process for @nixos.org addresses, which is also already used for [email protected].

(An aside: maybe now that NixCon is officially official, we can start using con.nixos.org or con.nix.dev or something?)

The NixCon domain is managed by CloudFlare. We use Cloudflare's email forwarding to forward <year>@nixcon.org to the year's cohort.

tomberek · 2025-03-29T18:47:19Z

Another consideration is when people donate services, equipment, hosting; not directly a monetary donation. Maybe a comment about that case?

doc/nixcon.md

infinisil · 2025-03-31T14:18:50Z

Updated in the NixCon org meeting today according to @tomberek's feedback:

Added more examples of custom ways of sponsoring
Lowered silver and above

infinisil · 2025-03-31T17:03:52Z

I'm also changing something (hopefully uncontroversial) on my own: If somebody donates $$5\cdot2^{10}$$ EUR instead of just the required $$4\cdot2^{10}$$ EUR for the Gold tier, they also get 5 instead of 4 corporate tickets. One corporate ticket per $$2^{10}$$ EUR.

Lassulus · 2025-03-31T20:11:27Z

I think it would be nice if sponsorship and catering would be more interconnected. Since it is our biggest cost factor and we really want to provide free food for attendees?

infinisil · 2025-03-31T23:51:41Z

doc/nixcon.md

+- Visibility priority is given according to tiers and donation amount.
+- The sponsor can selectively abstain from perks.
+- Surplus funds will be used to support official Nix projects.
+- Reach out if you'd like to sponsor in a more custom way, such as food, drinks, services, equipment, or only specific perks.


@Lassulus Note that we also have this line here, though this is meant for companies that can provide benefits directly instead of funding.

Iirc the reason for not having tiers specifically for e.g. meals was that it's tricky to figure out the right balance between amount and perks. With standard tiers, the entire amount will be available for the organisers to make the best use of. But for a sponsored meal in comparison, most of the amount will need to be spent on the food itself (~10k for a fancy one), removing some of the organisers freedom to choose the best use of the funds. As a consequence, for the same amount as the standard tiers, perks should be reduced, or for the same perks as standard tiers, the amount should be increased.

That said, I think we could make it work and I would be in favor of a good proposal, but for now would like to defer this to not delay sponsoring further. There's nothing stopping us from proposing more tiers later on.

Yeah, I'm fine with going forward with the current proposal, but as soon as we have some prices for the actual food we should amend the sponsorship tiers to include some kind of food sponsorship, display that more prominently and try to get that covered first?

infinisil · 2025-04-04T12:35:54Z

We now have full board approval, but still need 2 more people from the SC to review/approve for a majority so that we can merge this and start receiving sponsorships for NixCon. Ping @roberth, @fpletz, @Gabriella439, @winterqt, @Ericson2314.

Mic92 · 2025-04-04T12:48:18Z

doc/mail.md

@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ The `@nixos.org` email server is currently hosted on [ImprovMX](https://improvmx

 ImprovMX is configured to forward emails on the following addresses to the respective users:
 - [email protected]: [email protected]
+- [email protected]: [email protected], [email protected]


Is the ping for the alias?

Yeah, the infra team should implement this change, but only once merged.

In addition to the SC approval, this PR now also needs an approval from the infra team though :)

I'm not sure an approval is necessary but they should implement it?

See NixOS/infra#608, and the caveat in the PR message.

Approval is necessary because infra is a code owner of this file, and we require approvals from code owners before merging.

As per NixOS/org#95 (comment)

Ericson2314 · 2025-04-06T17:25:41Z

doc/nixcon.md

+2. SC respondent ensures the SC internally rejects or provisionally approves the sponsor within 1 week.
+   - If rejected, SC respondent replies to the sponsor with the rejection message.
+3. If provisionally approved by the SC, SC respondent forwards the name and website of the sponsor to the NixCon orga Matrix room for organiser approval.
+4. Within 1 week, the SC respondent checks whether organisers are okay with the sponsor, and if not, ensures that the SC internally reevaluates final rejection or approval of the sponsor.


What does the second part mean?

if organizers are not OK, SC has to reevaluate and either accept that veto or ignore it (although ignoring it would be not good :))

In other words: The organisers have a chance to give input to the SC before a sponsor is approved. It's still the SC's final call, which can depend on how strong the disagreement is among organisers.

And it's the SC respondents (@tomberek / @winterqt) task to determine whether there's any disagreement at all among organisers, because if there's no disagreement at all (which I expect to be the case for most sponsors), there's no need to bring that sponsor up again with the entire SC.

Thanks! That clarifies it

infinisil · 2025-04-07T14:05:25Z

As we have 5/5 board approval and 6/7 SC approval, going to merge this! Next step is to get the NixCon website live so we have a place to link sponsors to. I'll get in touch with the other respondents on synchronising for the sponsors.

Ericson2314 · 2025-04-09T23:27:03Z

I was too slow to hit the green button, but yes I approve of this also

infinisil requested a review from a team as a code owner March 29, 2025 12:59

infinisil force-pushed the nixcon-sponsoring branch from 9865411 to 51ae532 Compare March 29, 2025 13:01

infinisil commented Mar 29, 2025

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Add NixCon sponsorship tiers and process

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Hashed out initially by @infinisil and @Ra33it0, subsequently refined with the NixCon 2025 organisers.

infinisil force-pushed the nixcon-sponsoring branch from 51ae532 to 7b96b26 Compare March 29, 2025 13:20

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Make sponsorship process year-independent

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infinisil added 2 commits March 31, 2025 16:15

Add more ways of custom sponsorings

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Lower tier pricing, more round numbers

58132af

More corporate tickets for more sponsoring

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Ra33it0 self-requested a review March 31, 2025 17:45

Ra33it0 approved these changes Mar 31, 2025

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infinisil commented Mar 31, 2025

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jfly added a commit to jfly/infra that referenced this pull request Apr 5, 2025

Add sponsor@

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As per NixOS/org#95 (comment)

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Add sponsor@ NixOS/infra#608

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infinisil merged commit 359fe1e into main Apr 7, 2025
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infinisil deleted the nixcon-sponsoring branch April 7, 2025 14:05

		- Board respondent: @infinisil or @ra33it0?
		- SC respondent: ???


		### How to sponsor

		Send an email to [email protected] (which will forward to both the Nix Steering Committee and the NixOS Foundation board) with:

Add NixCon sponsorship tiers and process #95

Add NixCon sponsorship tiers and process #95

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infinisil commented Mar 29, 2025

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tomberek commented Mar 29, 2025

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infinisil commented Apr 7, 2025

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