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Authorizing minor expenses by DSA without prior DPL approval



Hi,

Context: according to Constitution §5.1.10:
  The Project Leader may:
  [...]
  In consultation with the developers, make decisions affecting property
  held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See §9.). Such
  decisions are communicated to the members by the Project Leader or
  their Delegate(s). Major expenditures should be proposed and debated on
  the mailing list before funds are disbursed.


The Debian System Administrators sometimes need to make small expenses
for things such as buying cables or replacement hardware, paying
shipping fees for moving hardware around, etc. As an example, this
happened three times in July [1].
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/08/msg00002.html

The current procedure is that they ask for leader@ approval before
making the expense. Even if I try hard to act quickly on such requests,
it still requires a round-trip of emails that slows down their work
(look up the exact price, send mail, wait for approval, go back to make
the purchase).

I would like to change that process to:
  DSA is allowed to make expenses for up to USD 300 (total) every
  7 days to support the operation of Debian infrastructure (pay shipping
  costs, purchase of cheap hardware such as cables, replacement disk,
  etc.).
  leader@ and auditor@ must be notified of the expense as soon as
  possible (typically, just after the expense is made, at the same time
  as asking a Trusted Organization's treasurer for reimbursement).
  This process can be revoked at any time by the DPL, but that
  revocation does not affect the reimbursement of expenses that have
  already been notified.
  This process can be temporarily suspended at any time by auditor@.

In the worst case, it means that if DSA decides to suddenly go crazy,
Debian loses USD 300 and it's likely that either leader@ revokes the
process or auditor@ suspends it until the DPL can look into the
situation.

Comments/questions, before I make it official?

Lucas


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