Discussion: What makes a sponsor incompatible with our program?

A WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizing team has requested to drop a global community sponsorGlobal Community Sponsor Company that sponsors the WordPress community events through the global sponsorship program. from their 2018 event because the company hosts some websites owned by hate groups. This is the first request of its kind for the community team, and I thought it merited a group discussion.

The current list of expectations for WordCamp sponsors (and speakers and organizers and volunteers) includes the following:

  • I understand that WordCamp organizers, speakers, sponsors, and volunteers are expected to support the WordPress project and its principles.
  • I understand that the principles of the WordPress project include:
    • no discrimination on the basis of economic or social status, race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, age, or disability
    • no incitement to violence or promotion of hate
    • no spammers
    • no jerks
    • respect the WordPress trademark
    • embrace the WordPress license; if distributing WordPress-derivative works (themes, plugins, WP distros), any person or business officially associated with WordCamp should give their users the same freedoms that WordPress itself provides: 100% GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. or compatible, the same guidelines we follow on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/.
    • don’t promote companies or people that violate the trademark or distribute WordPress derivative works which aren’t 100% GPL compatible

Our goal is to work with sponsors that share the values of our community. We are mindful of the behavior of sponsors, organizers, speakers, and other volunteers, but we don’t examine every decision that a company or individual makes.

Sometimes sponsors make unpopular business decisions. Is there a point at which we might decide to exclude a sponsor because of a business policy or practice that is not addressed by our list of expectations?

Phrased in another way: beyond our current standards, are there additional reasons that businesses, groups, or people should not be accepted as WordPress community sponsors?

Please share your thoughts in a comment on this thread.

We’ll keep the discussion open for about 2 weeks, with the goal of closing comments by August 24.