Russ Allbery dijo [Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 10:42:47AM -0800]: > (... big snip ...) > 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? Right now, this is only bringing in unneeded (and much to the contrary, much counterproductive) noise in a very hard to reach agreement that AIUI had mostly been reached by the people involved. Yes, we might have to come to this general discussion later on. As Paul said, we might have to set guidelines on maximum anonymous amounts later on — I guess they had not been set because we just didn't envision this possibility. We might now have to discuss whether or not we accept pressure (and how much of it) from green little men coming out from flying saucers demanding us to take them to our leader, just because there is a possibility that in the future we might experience an alien invasion during DebConf, and then people will start bickering on why did we choose DebConf to be held at an alien landing site. This was an unforseen event, that was dealt with the best way we could (note that by "we" I mean the group — I keep out every year of the sponsor team, as I know it's not where my energies are most effective). The Huge Anonymous Donation^WLoan didn't take place. Can further details be made available? I have no idea. But having this discussion right now is really harming. Not only us as a project, but the mental health of the people most involved in the bid and the organization, that have invested long time in it. You are all welcome to be a part of the DebConf team, but please, work in it for a while before making life miserable for the rest. > 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. Right. We have had very hard decision processes over the years. And after all, we have come out with better policies. So, yes, we should have a talk about this kind of topics. Maybe as a DebConf session, maybe as a mail thread during a quieter period. Maybe something more ample (i.e. not just regarding DebConf but as handling funds in Debian in general). But, please, this is a very hard circumstance to bring up the point.
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