>> c) or a focus on young people/students, perhaps? >> >> This last option stands out most for me, whether it is 100% sponsorship >> or just 33% discount, the intention is to stimulate a future generation >> rather than to pay for results now. > > You are making the assumption that the future generation of Debian > contributors is to be found amongst young people and students. This is > not necessarily true, and I can think of several recent > counter-examples.
This target group comes with no guarantees at all However, it is standard practice for everything from software companies to political parties to operate some kind of program to recruit in this age group, e.g. free or discounted academic software, discounted mobile phone contracts Then again, when a vendor gives out their software for free, or when a phone company allows students to have a 33% discount, there is no `cost' of giving it away to a person who would never have paid for it - obviously with DebConf, there is a need to use cash to fund any such policies > I have the impression that it's much easier for the committee to judge > applicants based on their work plans' merits and benefits for Debian, > rather than judge on social/human aspects. But I'm not part of that > committee ;) Yes, I agree it is easier to make decisions on evidence about each applicant. Targeting a group (e.g. students) would be a different policy, perhaps with an independent process and a separate budget limit _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
