Hi, One other thing, then I'll make my peace.
Bruno Boaventura wrote: > I'm with Claudio on this issue. Last year I could not go to GUADEC if > I had to pay 200 € (wait to be reimbursed has been difficult). GUADEC > should be a special case. A person who shall rename nameless (unless he wants to pipe up) said to me when we exchanged emails on this previously: "it's really nonsensical to me if a longtime maintainer who is speaking at the conference would have to pay out of his pocket, while someone who barely contributes to GNOME and mostly is going to GUADEC to have a good time gets sponsored. Because that's what I've seen happen a lot in the past." He also said: "being employed should not be a disadvantage when it comes to community inclusion". So, to summarise, students want to come for free, core hackers (even those working for companies investing in GNOME) want to be considered for sponsorship if their company won't pay for them to go. Obviously, invited keynotes will have travel covered. This is the reason why the foundation, which has a €300K annual budget, is spending over €150K on its annual conference these days. It's the reason why we don't offer any travel assistance for the Boston Summit as a matter of policy (one I disagree with, by the way). It's the reason why, when raising more than double the money of Akademy last year, we were left with a smaller surplus to carry over to other activities. What I want is a reasonable travel policy. One where we fix ourselves budgets for travel and stick to them. Where we're transparent about publicising who we sponsor and how much they are sponsored for. Where the foundation and members of the community who get funding are accountable. Especially in a period where we're likely to have some trouble raising money for the next couple of years, I want us to be fiscally responsible, and also socially responsible to the community. OK - perhaps the travel guidelines that were proposed aren't perfect, but the idea, in case everyone missed it, is to delegate travel requests to a committee, who will apply guidelines from the board, and who will independently manage a budget, and who will publish the expenditure reports afterwards. That's a *very* positive change. I also think that formalising the principle that people participate in the costs of travel is a positive change, and it's not totally out of left field - this is the system that KDE has had in place for years, and is why they fund travel for more people than us, while spending less money. http://ev.kde.org/rules/reimbursement_policy.php Cheers, Dave. (Disclosure: last year I gratefully received €361 for my plane ticket, at a time when I'd just created my company & wasn't making any money yet) -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [email protected] _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
