Hiya, On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 03:03:46PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > […] > The current travel sponsorship system is not fit for purpose. Someone > who can't go unless they get travel sponsorship can't book their > travel unless either they get the sponsorship in time to do so, or > they find someone to underwrite it. > > Not just to keep costs down, but also to allow potential sponsorees to > plan their lives without having to decide at zero notice whether to > fly to Nicaragua for a week and a half, almost all of these decisions > should be made 4-6 months in advance. Yes indeed. Although I couldn't go in the end, when I applied for sponsorship for Debconf last year I found it very difficult to decide how much to request, since the prices you are quoted by airlines are likely to not be the same when you are able to book after having received notification about the success or not of your application some time later. This is notwithstanding the fact that there is (apparently, I never got that far) then another delay period before the money is actually paid out, meaning that only those who can afford the up front cost for the period are able to book then. Decisions and transfers of money should happen significantly before the conference is to take place. 4-6 months, as you suggest, is probably about fair. I would very much hope, given the importance of Debconf, that Debian is willing to underwrite this cost. Cheers, -- Iain Lane [ iain@orangesquash.org.uk ] Debian Developer [ laney@debian.org ] Ubuntu Developer [ laney@ubuntu.com ] PhD student [ ial@cs.nott.ac.uk ]
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