Re: [Debconf-discuss] "Anonymous donation" to Debconf 13
This point makes an awful lot of sense. Is it actually against an official policy to consider (not accept, mind you, since it was not actually accepted) an anonymous donation with strings attached? While it may seem that certain things are "common sense" we really cannot hold people to unstated policies for rather obvious reasons. Imagine if packaging was approached in such a way!
The activity that seems more concerning to me is the allegedly purposeful misrepresentation of the character of the donations by DebConf personnel . While I can't find anything in the Debian Constitution explicitly stating that official personnel must not lie about their activities, I think we can all agree on that one. It would be nice if the consequences of such an action had already been spelled out before now.
I'm not suggesting we figure out these questions in this thread. It might be important to take up a separate discussion spelling out a policy for officials. They really should understand, in advance, their obligations and have a clearly spelled out reference to guide their activities.
----- "Russ Allbery" wrote:
> Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> The part that I'm missing here is what you felt should have been done
> differently.
> Let's assume that Debian has no control over the offering of the donation
> (or loan) in the first place. I think that's a reasonable assumption.
> What I would then expect is for the team to discuss the offer (since no
> decision is ever going to be made out of hand), and then reject the offer
> as being insufficiently transparent and posing other problems with
> oversight and possible undue influence.
> That seems to be exactly what happened. So unless I'm missing something,
> the reaction indicated seems to be "well done, thank you for handling this
> ethically and professionally." I'm not inclined to blame people for
> temporarily discussing something, or even temporarily using it as an
> argument, before thinking it through further. Asking people to not do
> that seems to be an impossibly high standard to which to hold people. One
> of the ways that high-functioning groups develop and maintain ethical
> standards is to discuss ethical quandries in public.
> I'm not seeing any evidence on this thread (and, indeed, directly
> contrary assertions from people I think we all have reason to trust) that
> the withdrawn offer had any material effect on the choice of venue.
--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
ean@brainfood.com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com
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