Question for DPL Candidates: Debian $$$

[Joseph Nahmias]

Hello Steve, Luk, and Zak!

Having just particpated in the latest SPI board meeting, I've learned
that The Debian Project currently has over 125k USD in reserve.  This
amount (even setting aside the recent 30k debconf9 sponsorship by HP)
seems to be at a point where we as a project should start articulating
and coming to some agreement on what an appropriate level of reserves
is, and how (on what) to spend the excess.

Given that both platforms stress the leadership and communication
functions of the DPL, and that the DPL is the one specifically empowered
by the constitution to decide (along with the membership) how that money
is spent [§5.1.10], I'd like to hear some thoughts from all of the
candidates on:

    1 - What is an appropriate reserve level for the project?

    2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?

Thanks for listening and I look forward to the responses!
--Joe

PS - I subscribe to -vote, no need to cc me.


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[Manoj Srivastava]

On Wed, Mar 18 2009, Joseph Nahmias wrote:


>     1 - What is an appropriate reserve level for the project?
>
>     2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?

      3 - Should these decisions be made by the DPL acting alone, or
          should that be left to the project membership deciding
          collectively?

        manoj
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[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 09:24:29PM +0000, Joseph Nahmias wrote:
> Hello Steve, Luk, and Zak!

Argh, "Zack", with 'c' and 'k' :-) SCNR

> Having just particpated in the latest SPI board meeting, I've
> learned that The Debian Project currently has over 125k USD in
> reserve.  This amount (even setting aside the recent 30k debconf9
> sponsorship by HP) seems to be at a point where we as a project
> should start articulating and coming to some agreement on what an
> appropriate level of reserves is, and how (on what) to spend the
> excess.

Fair enough.

>     1 - What is an appropriate reserve level for the project?

I'm a bit uncomfortable in giving raw numbers, but let's see ... We
should keep enough money just to replace on the fly the hardware of
our main server infrastructure. In the long run we survive with
donations (of either the hardware directly or of the money to buy it),
but emergencies cannot wait.

I don't have a precise figure in mind, but I know how I would obtain
one. First by asking DSA to determine what are the key machines which
should be backed by an "immediate monetary coverage" if needed. Then
by collecting quotes for the corresponding hardware.

All in all if I had, gun pointed at my head, to make a guess, I'd say
that keeping emergency reserves at about 50k$ would be appropriate.

>     2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?

I've discussed some usages in my platform. I believe the most useful
one is enabling contributors to travel for getting
together. Unfortunately, even 100k$ is not that much if you start
paying entire trips, lodgement, and so on (cfr. DebConf budget). So
what I propose is to use Debian money to pay the "diff" that would
enable gettogethers that would otherwise be impossible. A technical
way to implement some quality assurance on the process, proposed in my
platform, is to rely on some kind of sponsorship where other
developers are required to back the funding request of specific
developers or contributors.

Other potential usages of Debian moneys are bounties, to which I'm not
opposed in principle. However, they should obey to very specific
rules. The first one is that no one already contributing to Debian
should be authorized to pick them up (no dunc-tank 2). The second one
is that they should be used only for tasks that we have a history of
not being able to fulfill by ourselves, and that are considered
blocking for some needed Project improvements. No matter how people
can get emotional about this, this would be way better that let money
rot in our bank accounts; money that people who love us have given us
to improve what we do.

In both funding scenarios, the final response on whether to fund or
not people will remain the DPL's, as prescribed by the constitution.

Cheers.

> PS - I subscribe to -vote, no need to cc me.

Fair enough, but note that your M-F-T header ask for an explicit Cc,
you might want to fix that.

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:59:44PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>       3 - Should these decisions be made by the DPL acting alone, or
>           should that be left to the project membership deciding
>           collectively?

I believe the decision should remain, as the default, a DPL priority
as prescribed by the constitution. However the constitution also says
that such decision are made in "consultation with the developers" and
that they should be debated in advance for "major expenditure".

Practically I believe it is fair to let the DPL decide alone for stuff
like hardware and travel expenses, on the assumption that having been
elected he/she has the trust of DDs on the matter. Other potentially
controversial expenses, for finality or amount, should be debated a
priori. Of course it is the DPL alone that can judge a priori whether
expenses are controversial or not, I don't see ways out of this ...

However, I do believe that our project expenses should be more easily
accessible to DDs than what they currently are. There should be a
clear, documented way to access a dead simple log file of all Debian
expenses, without requiring DDs to interact with SPI directly if they
are not willing to.

Cheers.

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 20/03/09 at 11:50 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:

> Other potential usages of Debian moneys are bounties, to which I'm not
> opposed in principle. However, they should obey to very specific
> rules. The first one is that no one already contributing to Debian
> should be authorized to pick them up (no dunc-tank 2). The second one
> is that they should be used only for tasks that we have a history of
> not being able to fulfill by ourselves, and that are considered
> blocking for some needed Project improvements. No matter how people
> can get emotional about this, this would be way better that let money
> rot in our bank accounts; money that people who love us have given us
> to improve what we do.

This raises the question of bounties sponsored by companies to do Debian
development. Of course, the DPL can't prevent companies from offering
money to do Debian work. However, as a DPL (or 2IC), will you actively
seek such sponsorship, or help companies propose such sponsorship? Under
which policies (e.g restriction on who can apply)?

Zack wrote that no one already contributing to Debian should be
authorized to pick bounties offered by Debian directly. Would you
encourage a similar position for bounties offered as part of the Google
Summer of Code, for example?
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@...   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
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[Luk Claes]

Joseph Nahmias wrote:
> Hello Steve, Luk, and Zack!

Hi Joseph

> Having just particpated in the latest SPI board meeting, I've learned
> that The Debian Project currently has over 125k USD in reserve.  This
> amount (even setting aside the recent 30k debconf9 sponsorship by HP)
> seems to be at a point where we as a project should start articulating
> and coming to some agreement on what an appropriate level of reserves
> is, and how (on what) to spend the excess.

Note that SPI is not the only organization holding money for Debian. The
Debian Auditor has recently promised to give a complete picture in the
near future...

> Given that both platforms stress the leadership and communication
> functions of the DPL, and that the DPL is the one specifically empowered
> by the constitution to decide (along with the membership) how that money
> is spent [§5.1.10], I'd like to hear some thoughts from all of the
> candidates on:
>
>     1 - What is an appropriate reserve level for the project?

Currently project money is mainly used for hardware (most of it is
donated though) and travel reimbursement.

So there are almost no recurring expenditures. Worst case there would be
a fast need of some thousands, so the reserve level needed is quite low.

>     2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?

I think it could be spent more on organising meetings and maybe some
clear instructions should be prepared to make that easier.

Meeting people in person improves communication, makes it easier to work
together even when only meeting online afterwards, ... so I think it
should be the top priority for money expenditures.

Cheers

Luk


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[Luk Claes]

Manoj Srivastava wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 18 2009, Joseph Nahmias wrote:
>
>
>>     1 - What is an appropriate reserve level for the project?
>>
>>     2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?
>
>       3 - Should these decisions be made by the DPL acting alone, or
>           should that be left to the project membership deciding
>           collectively?

I think the project membership is fine with having money spend on
hardware and travel reimbursement in general.

Excessive expenditures or expenditures on other items should be
discussed with and agreed by the project membership before specific
cases can be considered by the DPL IMHO.

Cheers

Luk


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[Luk Claes]

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 09:24:29PM +0000, Joseph Nahmias wrote:

>>     2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?

> Other potential usages of Debian moneys are bounties, to which I'm not
> opposed in principle. However, they should obey to very specific
> rules. The first one is that no one already contributing to Debian
> should be authorized to pick them up (no dunc-tank 2). The second one
> is that they should be used only for tasks that we have a history of
> not being able to fulfill by ourselves, and that are considered
> blocking for some needed Project improvements. No matter how people
> can get emotional about this, this would be way better that let money
> rot in our bank accounts; money that people who love us have given us
> to improve what we do.

I don't think bounties are the answer. I agree however that money could
possibly be spent on tasks where we find no volunteer for. Though I
guess it will be hard to define such a task and would probably rather
expend money on ways to find a volunteer anyway (advertisement,
conference presence or whatnot).

Cheers

Luk


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[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:42:11PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> This raises the question of bounties sponsored by companies to do
> Debian development. Of course, the DPL can't prevent companies from
> offering money to do Debian work. However, as a DPL (or 2IC), will
> you actively seek such sponsorship, or help companies propose such
> sponsorship? Under which policies (e.g restriction on who can
> apply)?

No, as a potential DPL I don't plan to do anything like that, at least
as long as we have Debian money to spend first. Let me be clear on
this: the money we currently have, have been donated to us to put them
into use not to let them rot in bank accounts. So if we need money for
project "tasks" [1], the first place where to look is Debian money.

Also, the most important way of spending our money is helping
contributors to meet. Full stop. Then, in exceptional case where we
face blockers that can be resolved with money we can consider that,
with DDs agreement.

> Zack wrote that no one already contributing to Debian should be
> authorized to pick bounties offered by Debian directly. Would you
> encourage a similar position for bounties offered as part of the
> Google Summer of Code, for example?

I think similar rules should apply for GSoC. I see as the main
objective of that initiative that of attracting new people to Debian.
In that respect it is quite pointless to have people already involved
into Debian to get paid to get in touch with the project. It happened
in the past with the GSoC program, and I believe it was a mistake.

Cheers

[1] note that it is not always the case, IIRC ftp-masters for example
have started seeking direct hardware donations for the forthcoming
snapshot.debian.org, which makes perfectly sense

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 01:26:08PM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
> I don't think bounties are the answer. I agree however that money
> could possibly be spent on tasks where we find no volunteer for.

Which is my precise position (look at the two conditions I've posed)
... or else I'm not getting the distinction you are making.

> Though I guess it will be hard to define such a task and would
> probably rather expend money on ways to find a volunteer anyway
> (advertisement, conference presence or whatnot).

Bah. I don't think we need money for that kind of stuff. Just make
appropriate announcement via our channels using press teams.

Cheers.

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime

[Steve McIntyre]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 09:24:29PM +0000, Joseph Nahmias wrote:
>Hello Steve, Luk, and Zak!

Hi Joseph!

>Having just particpated in the latest SPI board meeting, I've learned
>that The Debian Project currently has over 125k USD in reserve.  This
>amount (even setting aside the recent 30k debconf9 sponsorship by HP)
>seems to be at a point where we as a project should start articulating
>and coming to some agreement on what an appropriate level of reserves
>is, and how (on what) to spend the excess.
>
>Given that both platforms stress the leadership and communication
>functions of the DPL, and that the DPL is the one specifically empowered
>by the constitution to decide (along with the membership) how that money
>is spent [§5.1.10], I'd like to hear some thoughts from all of the
>candidates on:
>
>    1 - What is an appropriate reserve level for the project?

I think we currently have too much money; I'd be happier if we dropped
it down by 50% or so. As far as I see it, most of the people who
donate money to Debian are giving it to us to use it, not to just
leave it sat in the bank. I've also been told by various people that
if they saw us using the money more, they'd donate more.

>    2 - How should funds above that level be allocated?

I've already made a point of trying to spend more money in my year as
DPL than previous DPLs, and I believe that we should continue on with
that policy.

We have always spent money on more hardware where necessary, but
mainly for consumables rather than directly on machines. We already
tend to get lots of offers of hardware donations, and it's more useful
in my experience to spend our own money on maintaining and upgrading
those machines rather than buying new.

I've deliberately pushed people to arrange meetings and travel to
conferences where they are useful to Debian. This is a no-brainer, I
think: we've had a lot of good results from those meetings and
conferences, for example paying for Luciano to travel to Las Vegas to
talk about the openssl bug.

Finally, there's always Debconf. For a few years now we've spent some
of the SPI money on Debconf to help top up what we can find from
direct sponsorship. In the current financial climate we may have to
spend more to keep things running OK there.

Do you have any further ideas yourself on where we should spend our
money?

--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@...
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me


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[Steve McIntyre]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:59:44PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>
>      3 - Should these decisions be made by the DPL acting alone, or
>          should that be left to the project membership deciding
>          collectively?

Hi Manoj,

For many of the expenses, I'm happy to leave it up to the DPL. For
really large amounts, it would of course be sensible for them to
consult with the project as a whole.

--
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Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back


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[Steve McIntyre]

Hey Lucas,

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:42:11PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
>
>This raises the question of bounties sponsored by companies to do Debian
>development. Of course, the DPL can't prevent companies from offering
>money to do Debian work. However, as a DPL (or 2IC), will you actively
>seek such sponsorship, or help companies propose such sponsorship? Under
>which policies (e.g restriction on who can apply)?

No, not at all: I think it would not be appropriate. If DDs
individually want to seek out sponsorship for their work, then that's
fine. But the project as a whole does not work that way.

>Zack wrote that no one already contributing to Debian should be
>authorized to pick bounties offered by Debian directly. Would you
>encourage a similar position for bounties offered as part of the Google
>Summer of Code, for example?

No. Who is picked in the end should depend on the terms of the scheme
involved and on the quality of the particular projects. In the
specific example of the GSoC, I'm much more interested in the
likelihood of the student project to succeed than in who the student
is.

--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@...
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Suspended animation, A state of bliss


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[Neil McGovern]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 11:50:52AM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Other potential usages of Debian moneys are bounties, to which I'm not
> opposed in principle. However, they should obey to very specific
> rules. The first one is that no one already contributing to Debian
> should be authorized to pick them up (no dunc-tank 2). The second one
> is that they should be used only for tasks that we have a history of
> not being able to fulfill by ourselves, and that are considered
> blocking for some needed Project improvements.
>

Except I'm not sure this would be legal under non-profit law, unless
you're very careful. There's an issue that funds can't be used to pay
someone the equivilent of a 'wage' in this way.
Donations must go into a central pot, and can't be specified for bounty
#263 for example.

I would suggest asking for legal advice if you you want to persue this,
I can try and dig out the previous stuff we got as well.

Neil
--
<gwolf> bah.... Germans. You just put 100 DDs in one country and then they all
        become friends of each other.


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[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 21/03/09 at 02:34 +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:

> >Zack wrote that no one already contributing to Debian should be
> >authorized to pick bounties offered by Debian directly. Would you
> >encourage a similar position for bounties offered as part of the Google
> >Summer of Code, for example?
>
> No. Who is picked in the end should depend on the terms of the scheme
> involved and on the quality of the particular projects. In the
> specific example of the GSoC, I'm much more interested in the
> likelihood of the student project to succeed than in who the student
> is.

That's interesting, especially with your role of GSOC admin for Debian.

Let's imagine that a random company contacted you (as DPL) and said:
"I'll give you enough money to pay 10 DDs during 2 months to work on
Debian ; you are free to choose who gets the jobs, and what people will
work on".
It's not totally unrealistic: it's what Google does with GSOC (except
that they impose that those who get the job are students, and that they
reserve the right to reject specific projects/students).

What would be your position?
--
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| lucas@...   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
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[Russ Allbery-2]

Neil McGovern <neilm@...> writes:

> Except I'm not sure this would be legal under non-profit law, unless
> you're very careful. There's an issue that funds can't be used to pay
> someone the equivilent of a 'wage' in this way.

US non-profits can hire employees, but I believe there are conflict of
interest limitations around the degree to which those employees can then
be involved in the governance of the non-profit.

> I would suggest asking for legal advice if you you want to persue this,

This is certainly good advice.

--
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[Steve McIntyre]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 07:41:34PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:

>On 21/03/09 at 02:34 +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> >Zack wrote that no one already contributing to Debian should be
>> >authorized to pick bounties offered by Debian directly. Would you
>> >encourage a similar position for bounties offered as part of the Google
>> >Summer of Code, for example?
>>
>> No. Who is picked in the end should depend on the terms of the scheme
>> involved and on the quality of the particular projects. In the
>> specific example of the GSoC, I'm much more interested in the
>> likelihood of the student project to succeed than in who the student
>> is.
>
>That's interesting, especially with your role of GSOC admin for Debian.

Yup, I remember you've complained about it in the past.

>Let's imagine that a random company contacted you (as DPL) and said:
>"I'll give you enough money to pay 10 DDs during 2 months to work on
>Debian ; you are free to choose who gets the jobs, and what people will
>work on".

I have no interest in making such a choice. I'd rather push the
company and DDs towards each other and let them work things out that
way. We've already had a number of places where companies have hired
DDs or paid them for certain jobs that they were interested in.

>It's not totally unrealistic: it's what Google does with GSOC (except
>that they impose that those who get the job are students, and that they
>reserve the right to reject specific projects/students).

That's over-simplified to the point of being incorrect. Google ask us
as a project to rank the student applications we receive, and to tell
them how many projects we would like funding for. We specifically ask
DDs to rate the applications and we use those ratings to rank the
applications. There are already multiple admins and mentors
registered, and we would like as many DDs as possible to help us make
the decisions.

--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@...
"I suspect most samba developers are already technically insane... Of
 course, since many of them are Australians, you can't tell." -- Linus Torvalds


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[MJ Ray-2]

Steve McIntyre <steve@...> wrote:
> Do you have any further ideas yourself on where we should spend our
> money?

How about paying grants to other charities to evaluate debian, to
adapt it to meet their needs and deploy it, or to hold meetings to do
that?

I was at a meeting for local voluntary and community infrastructure
organisations and the most-mentioned reason for not considering debian
seemed to be a lack of resources.  Meanwhile, the debian project seems
to have surplus resources.  This seems a bit of a daft situation.  Can
we fix it?

Regards,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:43:06PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Steve McIntyre <steve@...> wrote:
> > Do you have any further ideas yourself on where we should spend our
> > money?
> How about

I don't get much of the actual payment you are proposing to do, let's
see.

> paying grants to other charities to evaluate debian,

What does this mean? Paying someone to "evaluate" debian? I don't get
this ...

> to adapt it to meet their needs and deploy it,

Who will be payed to do the development and deployment? If that boils
down to paying DDs, then it is a no-go for me. If otherwise that boils
down to paying external people, you will first need to convince me
that you have looked for volunteers and you've found none.

> or to hold meetings to do that?

That, on the contrary, is perfectly reasonable and I will be all for
that.

> I was at a meeting for local voluntary and community infrastructure
> organisations and the most-mentioned reason for not considering
> debian seemed to be a lack of resources.  Meanwhile, the debian
> project seems to have surplus resources.  This seems a bit of a daft
> situation.

Please expand this argument. Who was looking for resources and which
kind of resources where they looking for?

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime

[MJ Ray-2]

Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@...> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:43:06PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > paying grants to other charities to evaluate debian,
>
> What does this mean? Paying someone to "evaluate" debian? I don't get
> this ...

As I understand it, charities currently pick their operating system by
either doing an independent evaluation (an old guide of that sort of
style from when I last worked for a non-profit is at
http://www.volresource.org.uk/swit/select.htm ) or by buying from an
approved list like http://www.ctxchange.org/directory/30

Use of debian seems to be limited because it isn't on any approved
lists and charties can't get funding for an independent evaluation at
the moment.  Would you support using donations to fund one or both of
those?

> > to adapt it to meet their needs and deploy it,
>
> Who will be payed to do the development and deployment? [...]

Whoever the charities would select.  I think it's not up to me because
I have a conflict of interest.

> > or to hold meetings to do that?
>
> That, on the contrary, is perfectly reasonable and I will be all for
> that.

How would you like that to work?

> > I was at a meeting for local voluntary and community infrastructure
> > organisations and the most-mentioned reason for not considering
> > debian seemed to be a lack of resources.  Meanwhile, the debian
> > project seems to have surplus resources.  This seems a bit of a daft
> > situation.
>
> Please expand this argument. Who was looking for resources and which
> kind of resources where they looking for?

Some attendees at the recent NAVCA.org.uk event http://bit.ly/EGL5
seemed to be saying that they didn't consider free and open source
software because of a lack of resources to get the decision-makers to
meet/work on such things. They weren't looking for resources, but they
didn't know that people donated money to organisations for the general
promotion of debian. I think that lack of awareness among non-profits
is something that debian's money could help to address, if there's
enough for the forseeable in-project needs.

I'm undecided about the most effective kind of resources, but there
only seems point investigating further if a general aim of targetted
debian promotion to NPOs would be funded.

Does that explain it and do the candidates think surplus donations
could be used to help NPOs to consider debian in some way?

Regards,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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