Re: "Anonymous donation" to Debconf 13

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Moray Allan writes ("Re: "Anonymous donation" to Debconf 13"):
> Since your questions remain unanswered, I just want to say as one of 
> the DebConf Chairs that I think the questions are valid, but I 
> personally don't know any details about this that would help clear them 
> up.

Thanks very much for your reply.

It is disturbing that you don't have the details.  It suggests that
not all of the global team have been kept fully informed.

> Certainly at the time many people within the DebConf team were 
> uncomfortable that this "anonymous donation" was used to argue that we 
> didn't need to worry about the high prices at Le Camp, and to argue that 
> we should definitely choose Le Camp since this money was only available 
> if we went there.

I find this unacceptable.  I think we should be told who it was that
was arguing that we should choose Le Camp for that reason.

How does the timing of these arguments, and of the donation appearing
and then disappearing, relate to the timing of the final decision
about DC13 venue ?

> As has been stated already in this thread, after some questioning it 
> subsequently turned out that it wasn't really a donation anyway, but a 
> loan with the intention of providing liquidity at an early stage, and 
> the DebConf budget team decided it was not useful to accept the offer 
> since alternative and less mysterious liquidity sources were available.

Quite!

Ian.