On 18/08/13 at 09:02 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > 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. Right. I clearly do not expect DSA to spend $15k/year using that process. I do not expect the procedure to be be used more than 10-15 times a year. If it looks like DSA is using this process a lot more than this expectation, or that DSA is trying to game the system by artificially splitting larger expenses to keep them under the limit, I will of course reconsider the whole process. If it is used 10 to 15 times per year, it means at most $3000 - $4500 per year, and that's something we can afford. Lucas
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