I mostly thinking you'd go to big companies with something at the $100k/year level for membership - including some influence in project direction, code review methods, audits, features etc.
Selling something online, could work but the question is what do they get for their money? a t-shirt, name on website etc. Though in a world of kickstarter it could work if done right. This is a $50/yr deal for most which is 20k people to get to that same $100k with a lot more community work to keep up with those people.
my main point here is that there is space between $50 and $100,000. Assuming OpenSSL doesn't have infrastructure, my suggestion is that they try to charge as much as they can and still stay under the level where you need sales.
$1000, from experience, is below the level where you need per-user sales.
>Selling something online, could work but the question is what do they get for their money? a t-shirt, name on website etc. Though in a world of kickstarter it could work if done right. This is a $50/yr deal for most which is 20k people to get to that same $100k with a lot more community work to keep up with those people.
I would suggest that for corporate sponsors, you make it more clear than Theo does that you are buying advertising, not donating money. I think selling a "I helped pay for software you use" website badge is a good way of doing that... but look at the mirrors.centos.org sponsors page. You are very clearly buying advertising space, in that case.
Heck, the CAs charge a lot of money for badges that mean nothing; The OpenSSL people could create a similar badge. "OpenSSL developer club auxiliary" or something.
Selling something online, could work but the question is what do they get for their money? a t-shirt, name on website etc. Though in a world of kickstarter it could work if done right. This is a $50/yr deal for most which is 20k people to get to that same $100k with a lot more community work to keep up with those people.