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Re: All DPL candidates: Debian assets



Hi Hector,

On 14/03/14 at 13:25 +0100, Hector Oron wrote:
>   a. Debian hardware infrastructure
>       0. What do you think of Debian teams owning their own
> infrastructure (hardware)?

First, generally, I think that one big risk for Debian is fragmentation
into smaller, team-sized sub-projects. That really scares me. One area
where this is already happening is processes for packaging with Git: we
so far failed to converge into a single (set of) recommended
process(es), and each team tends to implement its own variation.

But then, I'm not sure I understand the question. When a Trusted
Organization buys hardware on behalf of Debian, that TO becomes the
owner of this hardware, not a Debian team (even DSA). For Debian teams
to own hardware, they would need an official legal identity.

(I'm not sure I understood your question correctly, feel free to ask
again if I didn't)

>       1. If Debian team gets hardware resources from external
> parties/sponsors in monetary form, would you be willing to spend that
> money buying hardware for that team, or re-use existing hardware which
> is already part of Debian assets and save that money for something
> else?

Generally, we should of course seek to use donations we receive in an
optimal way. That most likely includes factoring the infrastructure
needs with our existing infrastructure.
However, if a Debian team does target-specific fundraising on behalf of
Debian, and this results in donations to Debian, we have a moral
responsibility (to our donors) to use that donation for the purpose that
it was intended for. I would say that here, the problem would be failing
to engage with DSA before doing fundraising for infrastructure.

>   b. Debian money
>       0. If Debian had an excess of cash, which topics do you think
> are more important to spend that money for the overall project
> benefit?

That's a difficult question. By definition, if Debian had an excess of
cash, it would already mean that we have already explored all useful
ways to make use of that money :-)
Again, I think that we have a responsibility towards our donors to use
donations a a way compatible with what they expect from Debian. If we
can't think of a useful way to do that, we should probably just save it
for later.

Lucas

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