Hi Lucas, On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 12:27:49PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > 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@. $300/week doesn't seem all that "small"; that adds up to an annual cap of $15,600/year. Is that in line with actual DSA expenditures? Is it actually sustainable, wrt revenue from Debian donations? I think $15k/year is a rather large amount for the "petty cash" budget for an organization the size of Debian, and wonder if this should be more conservative (e.g., $300/2 weeks, $500/mo?) so that DSA has the flexible spending cap they need without risk of accidentally running the accounts dry. In any case, I have no objection to the principle of streamlining the approval process for DSA's day-to-day expenses. Cheers, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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