Daniel,
as I said before, you raise points that are (a) mostly valid and (b)
not new. I don't want to discuss this without concrete steps coming
of it, and all you ever do is ask questions.
Allow me to refute your point about portfolio management though, and
offer two ideas about alternative uses of the money.
also sprach Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> [2016-03-03 15:18 +0100]:
> Why wouldn't people also potentially volunteer some time for
> portfolio management?
I'd consider this a really bad idea. Portfolio management is perhaps
*the* profession that benefits the most from a professional (or at
least one of them), contract-based separation between client and
actor, with extrinsic motivation of the actor. Even that's
impossible to properly tie down, but I certainly would never want to
see some people point fingers at others and claiming that they have
lost us money because the markets didn't do as they'd have hoped.
Would these volunteers invest in Microsoft? Google? Apple? Nestlé?
Weapons manufacturers? Companies that exploit resources?
> Personally I'd rather avoid seeing Debian become either a lender
> or borrower, unless the transaction was very conservative or
> highly strategic.
FSconservancy would be highly strategic, and while we don't have any
other uses for the money, they can use it to defend our cause, and
we'd benefit even if the loan was never repaid.
An alternative use of our money would be to spend it on sprints,
outsourcing of tasks, such as accountancy (and organisation of
sprints/events) to third parties, as well as using some of it to
design and fund a proper marketing campaign.
I'll eat a broom (with stick, German idiom) if we didn't manage to
replace the substance with a cash flow before it's depleted,
assuming it's done properly with enough freedom and the project's
backing.
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@d.o> @martinkrafft
: :' : proud Debian developer
`. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck
`- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
"women love us for our defects.
if we have enough of them,
they will forgive us everything,
even our gigantic intellects."
-- oscar wilde
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