I'm a bit gobsmacked about the rip-off of my open source sponsorship scheme, no prior-discussions from HQ with myself at all!

Don’t worry about it mate. They are entitled to sponsor who they like. They aren’t using it to drive sales they are just doing it because it’s the right thing to do.

Sure I get that, but the fact it's a blatant rip-off of my idea is not cool, especially without discussing it with me first! They were quick to send me legal notices over my old logo and branding

Isn't your scheme based on your clients deciding which projects to support with a percentage of their payments?

The only difference I can see here, is the amount being sponsored

HQ is selecting who they sponsor - you make it your clients choice. Big difference, but then anyway, you are not the first ever to do a sponsoring scheme, stop being so touchy about things that HQ does, that might be comparable to something you've ever done. I get that you are annoyed that you couldn't use HQs name and logo for your branding, but try to name a single company that would let you do that.

That's not the thing here, the fact is I created a scheme back in June, the only Umbraco based scheme.... Amazingly now HQ have decided to do the exact same thing 😂

HQs scheme is not Umbraco based. None of the projects being sponsored are umbraco projects.

I opened my scheme up a month or so back to include all open source projects...

Cool - great initiative! I still think, that your scheme still differs substantially from HQs, and even if it didn't, how would that harm you?

A simple discussion prior to this would have been suffice, being that it was a known scheme, rather than launching something, which takes a way a large selling point from my service

I still can't see the difference a discussion would make, I can't as an Umbraco user decide who HQ should sponsor, but as an UmbHost client I can decide who you should sponsor - big difference!

No I'm not saying that at all

HQs scheme is basically just them deciding they want to sponsor some projects, while being transparent about who and why.

And now amazingly they have their own one 😂

so what if some HQ staff laughed at it, your scheme is a great initiative!

Nobody at HQ laughed at it, we've told you it's a great initiative.

I'm going to chat to HQ directly about this, a little heads up would have gone a long way...

what's the name of your scheme? (and where do you see the name of HQs).

It has 2, Umbraco Opensource Developer Sponsorship Scheme and Open Source Developer Sponsorship Scheme

That would cause confusion with any scheme, especially if you didn't use the name Umbraco, which isn't yours anyway 🙂

No but it's the name of the product / project base being sponsored

Sure, just kind of generic 🙂

I'm quite familiar with the guidelines now after the earlier branding issues 😅

I've had chats with people at HQ more than a year ago when I still worked there where we wanted to sponsor some Umbraco package creators fx, so it's been brewing for a long time. Has always just been hard to do it the right way / figuring out who to sponsor. Don't think you should take it so personally Aaron, just be proud that something everyone seems to agree is a great idea is something you've already been doing for quite a while 😉 🙌

Well I've sent an email to HQ requesting an open and friendly discussion to see how we can move forward with this

Sorry you feel this way Aaron. I helped write the blog post and all I can say is that your scheme(s) were not mentioned at any point in any of the conversations I've been involved in regarding this. As Jesper said it has been on the idea board for quite some time. It has been suggested to us multiple times by the communnity and partners to use Github Sponsors or similar, to give back in some way and has been a wish from the devs at HQ as well. The initiative does not have a name. We've simply started to support 3 open-source projects that the developers at HQ use. They made the short list and have decided who to support. We're using the Github Sponsors as it is the easist way to provide this kind of sponsorship, for us and the recepients. I think open-source sponsorships and donations are a great way to help make things a little bit more sustainable for OSS developers, your schemes included.

Don't think you have to be worried about that tbh - just look at dates on their announcement tweet and one of your much earlier tweets would show it was already existing 🙂

It's not the social side, it's the search side if that makes sense. I don't want to be accused of anything if Google decided to put my result before Umbraco's. Nor do I want to be accused of causing confusion between Umbraco and myself, as that is what happened with the branding previously.

As we've told you on many occasions, we very much approve of you sponsoring OSS projects! 🙌 And you're not doing anything wrong legally at all. It's all good Aaron, you have nothing to worry about.

Please try and see this from my angle, when I have previously been warned (and had letters from your legal people) around branding

Yeah, we had a problem with your usage of our branding before, you immediately changed it and for the past few months we've been trying to tell you that it's all behind us and we love what you're doing. 🙂 Nobody is after you mate. Peace ☮️

I hope there is no legal angle to using words like sponsorship and open-source in conjunction. Especially not in a blog post about this subject. That would make my life as a copywriter quite difficult 😅

No but general confusion over the two schemes could cause an issue, especially if one could been seen as looking to be approved by another legal entity

We approve. #h5yr!

I'll await for a discussion with your legal people over this so I have it in writing 🙂

It's a shame that you don't trust my word but so be it.

I'm not going to air my thoughts on that comment here... I just don't want history repeating itself 😉

And we've talked about your misunderstandings about this Aaron. But let's not go in circles here.