Re: [Debconf-team] Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works
Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:31:54AM +0200]:
> I think that this would be a too big hit on privacy of the beneficiaries of
> travel sponsorship: the "amount-name" relationship is too sensitive to be
> published. Publishing how much the Debian project gave to support who's travel
> IMHO introduces all sort of social biases in unsuspected ways: one's employer,
> partner, friends, family, etc, get to know that "one can't even afford a trip
> to $country", to take a simple example outside Debian. It also helps to game
> the system in future years: "oh, that other DD in my area asked for $amount, I
> can probably get the same even if I don't need it".
Right. I share your concerns. I think the information I would be
comfortable disclosing are aggregated (or even individual) numbers,
stating total travel amount, amount requested/granted by us, and *at
most* a coarse geographical area. So, say, we would report that "we
funded CHF7500 of travel expenses (out of CHF10,350, with CHF2,850
paid by the sponsorees) for the attendance of 6 people coming from
North America". Maybe also the percentage of people requesting
sponsorship that got it — "We managed to sponsor the travel of 45 out
of the 70 people that requested it".
> On the other hand, I very much understand the need for transparency: the
> project spends money from sponsors to help contributors' attendance (but
> that's equally true for accomodation or food sponsorship). We need to be able
> to publicly describe how the travel sponsorship money was spent. I therefore
> propose to either publish a sorted list of anonymised amounts, such as [0]:
>
> ^ Amount ^ Country of departure ^ Project status (DD/DM/…) ^
This could work this year, say, for people from Europe. however, if we
were to find a line saying that a Mexican DD got CHF3000, I'm sure I'd
get somebody questioning as to why am I travelling on business class
on Debian funds.
Maybe I'd agree not *publishing* this list, but formally agreeing to
disclose the (full, with names) list to DDs requesting it, subject to
treatment similar to debian-private (or even posting the list to
debian-private). I still don't like the idea of being able to single
out individuals, but I could agree to this.
> > This would allow for at least basic oversight of the process by outsiders.
I'm not sure if I care about outsiders here. Yes, we want to show
sponsors we give good use of their money. But I care more about
insiders who have shown their lack of happiness with the current
scheme.
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