Re: Question to candidates: How do you plan to manage finances/accounting?

[Sruthi Chandran <srud@disroot.org>]

On 3/22/24 09:23, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> I am interested in knowing about what the current candidates think about
> accounting bits in Debian and how they think about spending the money.
I think the money should be spent based on the evaluation of cost to 
benefit ratio.
> As I have read and from time to time observed, the finances in the project
> do not have a lot of transparency and there are updates posted semi-occasionally
> on -private and sometimes in DPL talks. Jonathan also wrote about it in one of their
> previous campaigns. Itd also be good to know if there's a plan on where the budget
> shall be best spent.

While I believe that deciding in advance where to spend and where not to 
spend money in advance is not a great idea in our context. If there is a 
fixed amount of money to be spent in a year, distributing under various 
budget headers would be a good idea. But in Debian, it is not the case. 
Some years, there will be more expenditure and some years not much. Only 
plan I right now have is to revisit the diversity budget and how to 
increase the efficiency.

My money spending decisions will be based on "does the outcome justify 
the expenditure".

I agree on your point of lack of transparency about the finances. But 
from what I understood from highvoltage's  platform last year, the 
problem is more to do with the current delayed, manual and tedious 
accounting process. Now I do not have access to the accounting process, 
but once I have access, I would definitely spend some time to evaluate 
if a better process can be implemented. I would try my best to have 
transparency in finances (at least on -private).

> I would like to know if the candidates for this term have any plans about it or any thoughts
> in general.
>
> Both of your platforms have only a (very) vague idea about it and I'd like to know more
> specifics about it.
I know my answer here also does not have much specifics, it is because I 
prefer a case to case decision rather than a general decision.
> PS: I urge _only_ the candidates to reply to this mail 😀
>
> Best,
> Nilesh

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