Re: [to all candidates] using debian funds for Debian's hardware infrastructure
Martin Zobel-Helas zo...@debian.org writes: in the past Debian had some generous donors, who donated a huge amounts of high quality hardware on regual basis to the Debian project. For some reasons (not to be discussed here) those sources dont exist any more. One idea - perhaps a naive one, as I do not know the circumstances - could be to figure out a way to find hardware donors again, to cover at least part of the expenses. This obviously assumes that this is possible, and because the reasons why these donations stopped is not known to me, neither should the issue be discussed here, I'm unable to elaborate on this idea. But it is, nevertheless, something to consider, in my opinion. As this hardware comes to the end of it's lifecycle, DSA will need to buy new hardware. To keep up our standards on hardware for core infrastrucure, DSA will need to spend several 10k USD on new hardware in the next year. @all: do you think it is worth spending large amount of money donated to Debian to keep our core hardware infrastructure on its current level? Yes, it is. @all: do you think Debian should do a fundraising campain where we collect a larger amount of money dedicated to Debian's hardware infrastructure? This, I'm not sure about. I donated to a number of fundraising campaings by members of the larger free software community, and it filled me with sadness that quite a few of them never reached their goal. That's discouraging both for the project, and for those too, who did donate. I don't want that. So *if* such a campaing is to be made, it needs to set an achievable goal, and it must not be neither the sole source of funding for Debian hardware, nor the biggest part of it. There's a lot more that needs to be done for a campaign to be successful, ranging from making it known and visible, long enough to receive a usable amount of funds, but short enough to not be seen as 'begging', either. It must have a clear goal, a generic we need hardware, please donate is not going to cut it - people want to know what their money is used for, and we want to tell them up front too (that's one of the reasons why the work of Debian Auditors is so important, among other things). But alas, we already have fundraising campaigns within the project, so all we need is get the relevant people involved, and help them prepare and drive the campaign (which, of course, includes learning from past campaigns too, and improving on their ways too). And if we do launch a new campaign, we need to ensure that there is coordination between the new and running campaigns, to avoid approaching the same organisations twice, without knowing about the other, and other similar mishaps. @lucas, @algernon: in your platform you are not stating how you will handle money requests, and what do you think about using Debian's money at all. Can you please elaborate? When it comes to financial stuff, I'm bad at it. Luckily, I'm well aware of that, and even better, so is Debian (Constitution 5.1.10). Therefore, my intention is to, if elected DPL, rely on (and possibly delegate, if that seems more useful) trusted members of our project, who are far more experienced and better at these matters than I am. That's not to say I don't want to be involved, quite the contrary! I just know my limits. Nevertheless, the general idea is to continue down the path we're on, and make spending as transparent as possible. Due to my shortcomings mentioned above, to do my job properly, transparency and involving the larger project in decisions is the only option available to me anyway. If elected, this may result in some bumpy times in the beginning, slower reactions and perhaps more bureaucracy than needs be, but in time, it should become a much smoother procedure. I only touched spending, however. As far as fundraising goes, there are existing campaigns, and there's a need for more. I think we can all agree, that coordinating these would be beneficial for everyone involved, and thankfully, we have people more than capable of undertaking that task, and as DPL, a task like this will have my full support. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/877gldghtn@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: [to all candidates] using debian funds for Debian's hardware infrastructure
On 2013-03-12 02:47, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: @all: do you think it is worth spending large amount of money donated to Debian to keep our core hardware infrastructure on its current level? For people who don't know what the hardware replacement plan is about, see e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/04/msg00079.html First, I should say that from my perspective this path was already agreed on in the project, and I think that an incoming DPL should need rather strong reasons to abort existing spending plans (and if so should make it a prominent part of their platform). Since we potentially change DPL every year, but many parts of the project work on a longer timescale, we would have major problems if each incoming DPL reopened decisions about hardware spending, the DebConf budget, etc. Having said that, when I first heard about the planned level of spending for new hardware, I was a little concerned about it. In part, it wasn't clear to me (just as an interested Debian member) how much cost/benefit analysis had been done for different options, though I mostly trusted that the involved people were making a sensible decision. More significantly, I wanted to see clearly that we would try to balance spending by fundraising, not just run down existing Debian funds then have a problem later -- of course, money sitting unused isn't helpful, but we should weigh up the benefits of alternative uses of money. And while it might not be relevant for a few years given the economic situation, I would prefer it if we continued to seek appropriate hardware donations, in the hope of shifting back towards more donated hardware if it became possible. If I had been DPL when the hardware replacement plan was first proposed, I'm rather confident that you would have persuaded me it made sense, I'm just trying to describe the kinds of ways that I want us to think carefully about money. As a more general point, I also think that for the longer-term we need to establish some clearer conventions about how we authorise non-urgent spending. The constitution says, [The DPL may] In consultation with the developers, make decisions affecting property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See ยง9.). Such decisions are communicated to the members by the Project Leader or their Delegate(s). Major expenditures should be proposed and debated on the mailing list before funds are disbursed but I don't think we have any convention on what counts as major. And, even after a debate, the DPL can ignore the real consensus. While most decisions in Debian can be reversed later, once money is spent we can't override that. @all: do you think Debian should do a fundraising campain where we collect a larger amount of money dedicated to Debian's hardware infrastructure? I would like us to do more active fundraising in general. Spending money on hardware will be a clearly positive use of donations for most donors. I don't think it will help us to split hardware infrastructure fundraising into a separate fund, but it might be useful to run a fundraising campaign which promotes this specific need. @moray: can you tell DSA the lottery numbers of next week please? 3, 11, 14, 24, 34, 35. But I won't tell you *which* lottery those are for. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/a42b79bfd976edc41a18162b866ce...@www.morayallan.com
Re: [to all candidates] using debian funds for Debian's hardware infrastructure
On 12/03/13 at 00:47 +0100, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: Hi, in the past Debian had some generous donors, who donated a huge amounts of high quality hardware on regual basis to the Debian project. For some reasons (not to be discussed here) those sources dont exist any more. As this hardware comes to the end of it's lifecycle, DSA will need to buy new hardware. To keep up our standards on hardware for core infrastrucure, DSA will need to spend several 10k USD on new hardware in the next year. @all: do you think it is worth spending large amount of money donated to Debian to keep our core hardware infrastructure on its current level? Sure. It's very important that we continue to have an infrastructure in a very good health. @all: do you think Debian should do a fundraising campain where we collect a larger amount of money dedicated to Debian's hardware infrastructure? There are several questions here: 1) Should we do fundraising? My answer is Yes. We need some money to support Debian development. 2) Should we spend more on hardware? (larger amount of money) I'd say that it depends on the needs. Our infrastructure is extremely important, but we still need to make sure that expenses are justified. Of course, I have a high confidence that DSA is reasonable ;) 3) Should we do fundraising specifically for hardware? In a fundraising campaign, it generally helps to have a story to tell to possible donors. Or afterwards, to be able to say thanks to our donors, we were able to So yes, we could use our hardware infrastructure as a story in a fundraising campaign. That would also be a nice way to advertise how our infrastructure work. @lucas, @algernon: in your platform you are not stating how you will handle money requests, and what do you think about using Debian's money at all. Can you please elaborate? On handling money requests: As pointed by Moray, we have a small problem with how money requests are currently handled, and we could improve transparency a bit. For example, planned expenses could be announced on a list to give a change to other DDs to react. On using Debian's money: My line, which is quite consensual I think, is that Debian money can be used to support Debian development (hardware infrastructure, travel reimbursement, ...) but not to pay contributors. If we were to run our own internship program, I would be hard to convince to use Debian money for stipends. A separate fundraising campaign specifically for stipends would be better IMHO. And I would probably disagree quite strongly if the program allowed DDs to receive stipends. [ I'm copying here Raphael's question, since it covers money as well ] On 12/03/13 at 10:43 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: To other candidates, do you believe that we could benefit from using money for other things than hardware and meeting/travel reimbursment? If yes, what kind of things? Again, several questions in one: 1) Could we use Debian money for other things than hardware and meeting/travel reimbursement? Yes, we could. 2) Would it be a good idea? Could we benefit from it? Maybe. Depends. 3) For what kind of things? Since you are asking the question, isn't it up to you to come up with ideas/examples? :) I find it difficult to discuss such things in the general case. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312225842.ga11...@xanadu.blop.info
