Re: Question to all Candidates: Project Funds and donations
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Martin Zobel-Helas <zobel@debian.org> wrote:
> The Debian Project receives quite a number of monetary donations as well
> as contributions in kind via several umbrella organization like SPI,
> ffis, debian.ch, etc.
>
> a) What do you think are valid goals to spend this money on?
I've been thinking about this for a long while now. I think that the
areas that deserve spending Debian's money are: keeping Debian
running, improving the overall quality of the OS, getting more people
to contribute to Debian, and getting more people to use Debian.
Currently, there's a portion that is used to fund developers
travelling to work-meetings or to DebConf, and another one for
shipping and setting up hardware. I think that these are all valid
ways to spend money, and that we should encourage them.
I also would like to see some money spent on promoting Debian, by
providing materials for booths in conferences around the world. This
would not be too much money from our accounts, but it could make a lot
of difference regarding the image that people have of Debian.
Another possibility that would help giving Debian visibility as well
as improving the overall quality of the distribution, would be holding
bug-fixing and bug-reporting bounties, but with Debian merchandise
(t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc) as prizes (i.e. not monetary
prizes)... And if it works we could maybe even get sponsors to donate
some bigger prizes.
I think that more money could be spent in financing travel for
developers to attend conferences, meet with other contributors and
give talks related to Debian. For this part, I think we should form a
delegated committee, like we do for DebConf to allocate the money, so
that it's not left to the arbitrary decision of the DPL.
Obviously this should all be done as long as there's enough money left
in the Debian accounts for hardware and emergency needs.
> b) How would you think is a valid way to thank (hardware) contributors?
> b) What qualifies a contributor to become a "Debian Partner"? What
> qualifies a "Debian Partner"?
This feels like a question from the NM process. The way to thank
donors is by showing their logos and listing their contributions in
the Debian Partners page. I'm not totally sure of what the question
is.
I don't know how it was decided which contributors are listed and
which are not. But I guess that current providers of hardware and big
money contributors should be listed, while past contributors should be
listed in a separate "Previous Partners" or the like.
--
Besos,
Marga
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