GoDaddy sponsorship

[Paul W. Frields]

Some of the volunteer planners for FUDCon have been working on
potential sponsorship opportunities with different commercial firms,
some in the PHX area, to help defray some FUDCon costs.  To those
volunteers, your work is highly appreciated!  Regardless of whether
any of these firms contribute sponsorship funds, we'd of course love
to see them at the event.

One of the sponsorships being pursued by our volunteers is with
GoDaddy[1], a fairly well-known hosting/VPS/services company.  Some
concerns have been raised about GoDaddy as a sponsor, primarily
because the perception of some of their advertising may have an
unintended adverse effect on FUDCon.

We want the proceedings to be as welcoming to everyone as possible,
since after all FUDCon is free and open to everyone.  (In fact, AFAIK
there is no argument whatsoever that we are overjoyed to have GoDaddy
employees attending.)  However, if associating our event with GoDaddy
through a direct sponsorship results in a misunderstanding of Fedora's
inclusivity, then that sponsorship wouldn't be to our benefit.

I'm not offering any opinion on the values or actions of GoDaddy.
That's not why I'm writing about this issue.  I simply think we run a
substantial risk of creating a mistaken impression about inclusivity
in the Fedora Project with such a sponsorship.  With so many other
rewarding and valuable ways to spend our valuable resources, time, and
attention, I think it behooves us to find sponsorships with less
potential for divisiveness in the free software community.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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