On 2/10/17, 3:52 PM, "Justin Mclean" <jus...@classsoftware.com> wrote:
>Hi, > >> However, in January 2015, the board decided to entertain proposals for >> directed donations. > >This proposal doesn’t see to match with what in that board report [1] as >it's for $50,000 sized experiments. Are you sure you get board support >and VP funding approval for this proposal? The discussion on board@ invited me to pursue this approach. Once it is a more detailed and concrete proposal and is approved by the PMC it needs official approval by VP Fundraising and the board. So it could get blocked there at any point in time. > >> 3) I am currently paying for one of our CI servers. If we could get >> directed donations to pay for it, we might be able to upgrade to a >>faster >> server. > >Why not talk to Infra they should be able to help and give up a better >server? Sure Is it easier to setup up one ourselves short term, but long >terms costs may be greater. I've asked twice for a VM. Each time the answer was "Yes", then "No". I've given up trusting that the answer will stay "yes". That's just ends up with us using more Infra resources. If they ever need to cut costs, they'll start saying "No" again. The goal of the experiment is to see if we take on more responsibility ourselves, do we get more donation money we can use in case costs are higher? > >My concerns: >- I’m not sure it’s in line with ASF mission of “for the public good”. >If the ASF only accepted project that could pay for themselves it would >be very different to what it is today. I forgot to mention that at least 15% of every dollar donated must go to the ASF general fund. That will be the starting "tax rate". So yes we still benefit the general foundation, but the math looks like of every dollar, we get 85 cents to spend. The ASF has 300 projects so for every dollar our share should only be 1/3 of a cent. >- The PMC will need to spend more volunteer time on setting up and >maintaining and updating servers. >- Security and the risk around self hosting, particularly if we offer non >static services on it. What happens if our server gets compromised. Would >that damage our project and the ASFs reputation? What would the board do >in this situation? >- Bus factor. If the person who’s set up a critical piece of the >infrastructure leaves the project that knowledge is lost. >- Risk to uptime of services. If a server goes down who can fix it >quickly it not like we have people on call or have monitoring systems (or >we could but that’s more cost). >- Administration of donations, who has access to the bank account, >auditing and legal responsibilities around what we can and can’t spend it >on. Would we need to pay for professional services here? >- Risk towards the ASF 501(c) status, is anyone here an expert on US tax >law and what we can and cannot no in that regard? Would we need to pay >for legal services here? >- Risk of outside influence / perception of non neutralitily to companies >who directly donate All good discussion points. The board is not currently worried about 501(c)3 status except if we start spending money on things we shouldn't so there will be some rules on that. But paying for things the ASF currently pays for isn't a worry. > >Now I'm sure that most of these can be sorted up but my first impression >is seems like a lot of effort, risk and potentially increased costs over >what we currently have, but if you want to run with it and manage to get >support from the rest of the PMC, the board and VP funding then go for it. The philosophy is to take on more work and responsibility and costs in order to guarantee our future by proving that we are a positive financial contribution to the foundation. -Alex
