Re: [Debconf-discuss] "Anonymous donation" to Debconf 13
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Russ Allbery writes:
>> That seems to be exactly what happened.
> No. My reading of Moray's message is that some members of the Debconf
> teams used the existence of the donation as an argument in favour of
> selecting Le Camp as the site.
At least for some period of time, assuming that the 46K refers to this
donation, I can see where you're seeing that. However, Holger has already
said directly that this was not conclusive and has stated a number of
other reasons for favoring Le Camp, which seems like the important part.
> Moray writes:
> 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 read Moray's "used to argue" as referring to arguments from people
> within Debian or Debconf. Obviously it would be entirely inappropriate
> for anyone within Debian or Debconf's decisionmaking structures to argue
> that we should make a particular decision because an anonymous donor
> makes it a condition that we do so.
Which is why, when the situation became clear, everyone stopped, no?
What remedy or action are you looking for here? I don't think breaking
the anonymity of a donation that never happened really makes sense. Are
you looking for site selection to be re-opened? Further reassurance that
the selection of the site was not influenced by the donation that didn't
happen?
I guess I'm still not seeing the correctable impropriety. I understand
that you're unhappy that this donation was ever used as an argument, but
to me that seems like a solved problem going forward, and we've already
had some reassurance that the site selection decision was not influenced
by that donation even though it temporarily surfaced as an argument in
favor of Le Camp. Do you want more reassurance on that score?
Given the fallout and the understanding shared among the DebConf committee
expressed here, it seems very likely to me that people will be even more
sensitive about this sort of donation in the future.
I guess the other possibility is that people might be concerned someone
involved in governance arranged this whole thing in a deliberately
manipulative way and has not been uncovered, and therefore may continue to
do so in the future. Certainly, that would prompt a high level of
concern. But I'm not really seeing signs of that in the discussion so
far. Also, at least from the outside, that strikes me as much less
plausible than most alternative explanations. It would require assuming a
lot of malice in a situation that can be adequately explained by
well-intentioned but misguided offers by excited people.
I guess where I'm coming from here is that at some point one has to trust
the process. I've been in governance situations with conflicts of
interest before, and they're very hard to avoid entirely. That's *why*
there's a process so that there are lots of checks and balances along the
way.
Please note: as difficult as this sort of discussion is, I actually agree
with Ian that this sort of discussion is valuable and helps keep a
volunteer organization healthy. Ethics are hard. They're tricky and
complicated, and they can always, *always*, be handled better. There's no
perfect way of handling situations, and always possible improvements, and
the way that one works out those improvements is through public
discussion. Having this sort of public discussion of one's decisions is
really painful, since it can feel personal and feel like an attack on
one's honor, but I really don't think it is. Rather, it's an
acknowledgement that this stuff is really hard, and lots of brains
together are sometimes required to find the best ways of handling various
situations, particularly unprecedented ones.
That said, the flipside of that observation is that it's almost impossible
to achieve a perfect decision-making process. Every process is going to
have some flaws in retrospect, but that doesn't mean the process is
invalid. That's exactly why it's so important to have a process with a
variety of steps that tend to fail independently.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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