new Debian Financial Partners list

[Andre Felipe Machado-3]

Hello,
Now that the new section Debian Financial Partners is available [0], we could
contact previous / present donors.
Is it possible that SPI and or debian project accountant, or someone else
knowing Project's history send message to partners@... with enough data for
contacting these people and companies?
Regards.
Andre Felipe Machado


[0] http://www.debian.org/partners

[Alexander Reichle-Schmehl]

Hi!

Andre Felipe Machado schrieb:

> Now that the new section Debian Financial Partners is available [0], we could
> contact previous / present donors.
> Is it possible that SPI and or debian project accountant, or someone else
> knowing Project's history send message to partners@... with enough data for
> contacting these people and companies?
>
> [0] http://www.debian.org/partners

I'm sorry for speaking up so late, but currently Meike as well as myself
are challenged with our new jobs as well as quite busy moving to a new
flat, therefore I haven't followed the discussion around that topic.

I'm writing now, because I don't like the current situation at all. I'm
especially worried about the "criteria" for being listed as financial
sponsor ("made substantial monetary contributions to the Debian Project"
or "regularly donates money to the Debian Project") which is to
ambiguous to be the base for any decision.  I'm also worried about how
these criteria can be handled in a fair manner.

One should also consider, that the current practice to be added as
partner was long term support, not a one time act. I also don't think,
that financial donors should be added by people associated / involved
with the donor and really think the texts should be written and added by
someone else to avoid conflict of obligations.

Last not least, I don't think that we should list amounts of donations
for several reasons. Thanks for Zobel for telling me and removing then
for me.


Before adding any new partners, we should first find a consensus about
criteria, not only about financial donors, but for the other partners as
well. I would furthermore like to discuss, if financial donors can be
considered as partners at all.  In my understanding "partnership" is an
active collaboration which I don't see in money donations. I'm not yet
sure, if want money donors to be listed at all (since I don't know how
to create a fair listing), but I really think they belong more to the
donations page, than to our partners page.


Best regards,
  Alexander, who hopes that this mail makes his thoughts clear enough;
the mail was written in a hurry

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <tolimar@...> [2009.11.07.0040 +0100]:
> One should also consider, that the current practice to be added as
> partner was long term support, not a one time act.

The donations have been going on for four years, and the reason
we're adding them to the partners page is because we would like to
continue doing so.

> I also don't think, that financial donors should be added by
> people associated / involved with the donor and really think the
> texts should be written and added by someone else to avoid
> conflict of obligations.

Has this been practice for all the other partners?

Feel free to rework the texts. As I state below, in four years noone
in Debian has seen the need to mention the contributions by the two
publishers, until I stepped up to take care of it (because the
publishers complained and wondered why they should continue). Please
don't file this under conflict of interests. We are (luckily) not
Wikipedia.

> Before adding any new partners, we should first find a consensus
> about criteria, not only about financial donors, but for the other
> partners as well.

Let's discuss. But let's not postpone giving credit until the
potentially lengthy process of us agreeing is over.

However, as stated below, we need to know sooner.

> I would furthermore like to discuss, if financial donors can be
> considered as partners at all.  In my understanding "partnership"
> is an active collaboration which I don't see in money donations.

If I look into the partners listing, I wonder how many of those are
"active collaborations". There's really not much of a difference in
a hoster donating hosting space, a CD publisher donating CDs,
a company buying hardware, or someone else donating money.

> I'm not yet sure, if want money donors to be listed at all (since
> I don't know how to create a fair listing), but I really think
> they belong more to the donations page, than to our partners page.

One-time donations, maybe. The donations page is possibly our most
boring page. It provides *zero* incentive to donate, because all you
get is a single line with a link. Every donation drowns in the list
and gets assimilated to all the others.

Anyway, we're talking about a deal here: every book sold gets Debian
cash. The amounts that have amassed well exceed 20'000€. I think
that puts them high up on the list.

My situation is as follows: the book is going to go into press in
Q1/2010, and it'll either say "we donate 1€ of every book sold to
Debian", or it won't. The first edition said so, and both publishers
kept the promise, but Debian didn't even bother listing them as
donors. Either this gets changes and the donations get recognised
appropriately, or we'll simply discontinue the donations.

Discussing first until we all agree does not acceptably fit into the
schedule. If this is what you see us do, we'll have little other
option than to discontinue.

Anyway, instead of

  The following organisations have donated money  to the Debian
  Project as one way of contributing through the Debian Partners
  Program.

I suggest introducing financial partners as:

  The following organisations share revenues of their Debian-related
  products with the project.

or just drop the introduction.

--
 .''`.   martin f. krafft <madduck@...>      Related projects:
: :'  :  proud Debian developer               http://debiansystem.info
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck    http://vcs-pkg.org
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
 
"first get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure."
                                                       -- mark twain