Re: Realizing Good Ideas with Debian Money
On Tue, Jun 04, 2019 at 09:24:59AM -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> Philip Hands dijo [Tue, Jun 04, 2019 at 10:51:10AM +0200]:
> > It occurs to me that we could establish some sort of hardship fund to
> > make sure that someone who's current situation falls below some minimum
> > that we could define, they would be able to apply for funding.
> >
> > For example, I recently bought some refurbished Lenovo X230 laptops for
> > GBP 85.00 each, mostly because that seemed cheap enough that I'd be
> > annoyed if my own X230 breaks and I'd not taken advantage of that deal.
> > Also, my daughters clearly need laptops.
> >
> > If there's any DD/DM who's current hardware is more ancient than that,
> > then if they'd like to upgrade, but cannot afford to, it seems to me
> > that for a small outlay from Debian they might well be enabled to be
> > much more productive.
>
> That's something I would clearly agree to. And it's a very different
> issue from paying to perform a given task - It's reaching out and
> helping those that can better contribute with the project. Besides, in
> the example you present, they would be quite smaller expenses for the
> project than what I would expect for a finish-a-hard-task gig.
In general this is a reasonable approach, but it might turn out to be
hard to define what is actually needed and by whom.
> > We've also occasionally had people who've been part of the project fall
> > on hard times, and I think that having the ability to quickly provide
> > benevolent funding to someone who's e.g. been rendered homeless somehow,
> > would also be something that we should try to make possible.
> >
> > Obviously, this might well bump into rules about what non-profit
> > organisations can do, so the details would need to be carefully worked
> > out.
>
> This could also work, provided it's done on an equitative basis and
> not based on current/recent performance - having it as a
> kind-of-safety-net. With some care so that's not a mechanism that can
> be abused. And, yes, making sure it's a legal way to spend our money
> (but I don't see why wouldn't it).
IMHO this would be a very bad idea.
There are many DDs in the US, a country that has a combination of very
high healthcare costs and not universal healthcare coverage.
What if a DD needs a life-saving procedure that costs a 6 digit amount
not covered by any insurance?
What if the child of a DD needs a life-saving procedure that costs
a 6 digit amount not covered by any insurance?
Or what if a DD lives in a country where a military conflict starts?
E.g. the situation in Venezuela could quickly detoriate to something
several orders of magnitude worse than being homeless in a first world
country.
Debian cannot be a safety net for everything that might go wrong
in real life (but individual members of Debian might be willing
to help).
And legally it would likely also be problematic to spend money on
healthcare bills or flying a family out of a country.
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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