How to buy a Django project

Hi folks,

I’m not sure where I’d ask this, so I hope it’s ok that I am leaving it here in Using Django

I came across this page recently on the Drupal website, with some guidance for people who are procuring digital projects who are interested in buying one in that uses Drupal in the stack. It’s worth a read if you sell projects or services with OSS in the stack:

https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/how-to-write-an-rfp-for-open-source-solutions-featuring-drupal-certified-partners

I’m not aware with one for Django projects, but I have seen guidance from various projects that use Django in the stack, explaining why Django is a solid foundation for services built on top of it.

Wagtail sort of does this when they talk about it being used as a basis for projects when selling to certain sectors - I’ve shared a few other links below:

Have you come across any more general guidance like the Drupal one above, that might result in favouring Django projects in future?

If you have, I’d be curious in learning more.

Ta!

For those curious, this proposal was not accepted for DjangoCon EU 2025 in Dublin, but my other one about using Marimo Notebooks with Django was accepted, so I’ll definitely be in Dublin.

I’ve attached the proposal below in case it helps kick off any new conversations.

Since submitting this proposal, I’ve also been accepted into the Django Fundraising Working Group - if you’re interested in talking about funding OSS (particularly Django, duh), then let me know!


Title

Procuring Django as a Public Good

Format

workshop - 50mins

Abstract

Every year, globally the public sector spends at least 13 trillion US dollars with its suppliers, and this translates into billions of dollars on software services. Many of these commercial agreements are governed by rules about spending that are designed to take into account ideas like social value beyond just price.

In the UK for example, since 2012, every public sector contract has had “social value” considerations that govern how people in control of budgets can spend money, which favour bids that can explain how in the delivery of work, they’re also able to deliver social and environmental outcomes.

The US and Europe have similar laws and guidance for public sector too, designed to favour paying prevailing wages, union labour, greener services and so on.

If we accept that open source software like Django is a public good, then being able to tell a good story about how it creates social value makes it easier for procurement guidance to favour projects using Django, and to make sure funding goes to the Django project as well.

This can help create a new funding stream for the Django project, that helps anyone who relies on Django.

Description

Who is this for?

Anyone with an interest in learning how Django is funded, and investigating new ways to fund the Django Project. If you work in an organisation that sells services to the public sector, Django is a dependency in your service, and you are involved in designing solutions and selling them, then this should be particularly relevant to you.

While the focus is on public sector, this is relevant to any entity that also includes social and environmental considerations when spending money.

How will the workshop time be spent?

Introductory briefing

To set the scene, we’ll give a backgrounder on where funding currently comes from for the Django Foundation, and the existing strategies for raising funds.

What social value provisions look like for digital projects

Interactively, and in groups if the numbers require it, we’ll run through concrete examples where and environmental outcomes are referenced in requests for proposals, and tenders in the public sector.

The organiser of the workshop will have some case studies and samples to start us off - but attendees are welcome to bring their own.

Moderated discussion

After getting familiar with the kinds of considerations built into public sector procurement , we’ll have a lightly moderated discussion about what activities in the Django community fit into these criteria.

For example, if social inclusion is something that winning bids favour in the public sector, what stories to we need to be able to tell about the outcomes of funding Django Girls workshops or Djangonaught Space, to write the funding of this work into our bids?

Would we need language to allocate a set amount of a project cost towards funding Django Foundation activities? Would this be a thing people selling Django projects would be prepared to write into commercial agreements? If so, what would governance look like? There’s plenty of talk about!

Intended Outcomes

A goal of this workshop is to generate interesting new ideas that could be developed inside the Django Fundraising Working Group, or used by people writing commercial agreements, where Django is a significant part of the technical solution used to meet a need that the public sector has tendered for.

A secondary goal is to meet other Djangonaughts with an interest in finding ways to support the Django Project that are tied to how it makes money for people now. We don’t need everyone in the Django community to have an interest in creative bureacracy, just like we don’t need everyone to be an accessibility expert, or a database wizard, but having a few definitely can help.

Below is what I think you’re saying; can you please clarify if I’m understanding you correctly? (Mainly I think I might be confused by the framing of the titles ”How to buy a Django project” and “Procuring Django as a Public Good.”)

  1. For the first post, esp. based on the Drupal example link you gave, it seems like you’re saying it could be worthwhile to create a similar help page meant for organizations giving out RFPs.

  2. For the workshop description, I think what you’re saying is that giving evidence that Django is a public good / has social value can help strengthen responses to RFPs while supporting Django by having it A) be used more widely by more projects and B) receive more funding.

Assuming I’m understanding correctly:

Re: 1 - I’m curious if an RFP issuer has actually used Drupal’s provided guidance/template.

Re: 2 - I’ve only worked on RFPs from the government so not sure how widely this is applicable to other kinds of RFPs, however my hunch is that it would be difficult to get direct funding to Django through this strategy. I do think it could help create more projects using Django. Main thoughts:

  • On the RFP issuers side, I think there is strong resistance to expressing preference (let alone a requirement) for using certain technologies over others to achieve the end goal of the RFP. That said, I do think Django has a strong enough argument that it’s possible you could convince a slight preference (e.g. “we are particularly interested in seeing proposals that use Django as its foundation”) in the RFP, maybe once in a while even stronger language.
  • On the applicants’ side, I think it would be very possible to encourage applicants to include the use of Django to fulfill RFP requirements, but I think it’d be a hard sell to have them include a line item for Django funding within their response to the RFP. I think this is mainly due to the inherently competitive nature of RFPs. If applicants think it’s less likely that RFPs that include what could be perceived as an “unnecessary” / “unrequired” cost, then including Django funding as a line item jeopardizes their ability to win the RFP at all. Even if both parties (the applicant and the RFP issuer) don’t view open source donation costs as “unnecessary” or “unrequired,” often a deciding major factor for RFPs being granted is total cost (so if the RFP specifies an upper cost limit and the applicant wants to include Django but is going over that amount, then the Django line item is going to be first on the chopping block).
  • Even if a line item is included and the response to the RFP is granted as is, then the line item would almost certainly be structured as a one-off donation as opposed to a recurring one.

That said, I think there’s a case to be made that this could increase funding indirectly (as in, the more companies that are using Django, the more opportunity for corporate donation). And maybe a line item for Django in RFPs was never what you had in mind when writing this (after all, the Drupal example page discusses how including Drupal would reduce costs and is directed at RFP issuers, not applicants).

Regarding:

The US and Europe have similar laws and guidance for public sector too, designed to favour paying prevailing wages, union labour, greener services and so on.

I’m curious which laws/guidance you had in mind here, esp. for the US? (No worries if you don’t have them handy/top of mind though.)

I felt kind of cynical writing this so counterpoints are more than welcome :joy:

Overall, I support the view that people/organizations (esp. for-profit corporations) that take advantage of open source tools should also contribute to them. I’m also open to the ideas here, though I would need more persuading to think RFPs are a big lever to pull in making that happen.

HI Stephanie,

I’m not so familiar with the US, but one of the recent explicit ones from a few years back was Executive Order 14057 of December 8, 2021 (link), which included new instructions on how money should be spent at a federal level.

It explicitly referenced greener services in section 301 Federal Supply Chain Sustainability.

In that same executive order, section 403 had a section, Accelerating Progress Through Public, Private, and Non-profit Sector Engagement - which was also a reference a union labour and prevailing wages.

There’s a bit of blurb about how it shaped how money was spent - Four Years of the (former president) Federal Buy Clean Initiative.

At a wider level, the Inflation Reduction Act, had various incentives for companies starting projects, to influence how they hired workers, and where they source materials.

I’ve shared two links below that outline how projects essentially get various tax credits for:

a) offering prevailing wages and apprecenticeships
b) using domestic content in projects (i.e. favour local steel, and parts etc.)

Because these were seen as strategically important, a company working on a project would get a chunk of their costs ultimately covered by the government via a tax credit, if they were able to meet these criteria.

The first here is from one law firm, Morgan Lewis explaining how the prevailing wage and apprentice requirements worked for the IRA in 2022.

The second is from the same law firm, covering similar incentives for sourcing “domestic materials”.

While price is obviously a factor, I think you can argue that procurement policies, particularly in the public sector tend to reflect all kinds of priorities beyond just price, because it’s one of the levers available to help achieve the goals of a government.

In the UK, the social value act is really quite explicit about this.

I’ll add some content from a gov.uk page on the Social Value Act that was introduced in the early 2010’s:

The Public Services (Social Value) Act came into force on 31 January 2013. It requires people who commission public services to think about how they can also secure wider social, economic and environmental benefits.

Before they start the procurement process, commissioners should think about whether the services they are going to buy, or the way they are going to buy them, could secure these benefits for their area or stakeholders.

Source: Social Value Act: information and resources.

I’ll have a think and respond to your other comments separately. Hope that helps!

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