Hi all, On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:01 AM Martin Zobel-Helas <zo...@spi-inc.org> wrote: > > Hi, > > On Mon Jun 08, 2020 at 17:13:43 -0400, Michael Schultheiss wrote: > > SPI is having a special meeting on 2020-06-22 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on > > irc.oftc.net to vote on this proposed resolution: > > > > Resolution 2020-06-08.mcs.1: > > 2020 Conferences and SPI 5% fee > > > > WHEREAS > > > > 1. Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) is a Debian Trusted > > Organization. > > > > 2. The annual Debian Conference (Debian) utilizes SPI to collect > > some of the conference sponsorship funds. > > > > 3. SPI has inconsistently charged its 5% administrative fee for > > conference sponsorships. > > > > 4. SPI has not yet determined the effect of waiving the 5% > > administrative fee for conference sponsorships in perpetuity. > > > > THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT > > > > 1. For conferences held by SPI associated projects in 2020 where > > SPI collects the conference sponsorship funds, SPI will waive > > its 5% administrative fee. > > > > 2. SPI will refund the 5% administrative fee to Debian for the 2016-2019 > > Debian conferences > > > > 3. Future administrative fee decisions for conference sponsorships will > > be determined at a later date. > > I dislike at least section 2 here, where we only refund Debian, but not > other conferences.
My worry (from X.org project) is that if we drop the 5% from conference sponsorships (which is the biggest chunk of income for X.org right now), then will SPI have enough money to run solid services? 5% is already at the very low end, and I believe with the size of SPI and all the projects it needs professional staff to keep track of all the book-keeping, invoicing and everything so that projects can focus on their missions. From the X.org side I think we need more of that, not reduce SPI's budget here to support projects. For XDC last year I think we had ~45k $ of sponsoring, but 10k was tallied up with the organizers directly (so didn't go through SPI's books, which was maybe not quite how it should have been done). > Also DebConf can not say they do not know about the 5%, as it is > well-known and documented per SPIs Projects howto: > > | All transaction costs (such as the fees we are charged to process credit > | cards and wire transfers) are deducted from the contribution, to the > | extent we are able to identify and attribute these costs. 5% of the > | remainder is deducted for SPI overhead. The remaining money is held on > | behalf of the project. > (Source: https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/) > > We might have made the mistake to not decuct the 5% in the past properly > and consistantly, but at least since 2017 we are doing this very > consistantly. > > I would also outline that a good amount of transactions *AND WORK* of > SPI's treasuruer and since mid 2019 paid accountant is actually DebConf > transactions. So just waiving the fees for past DebConfs while SPI still > has to pay fees for the work done on DebConf seems inappropriate to me. > > Having a paid accountant and having an official audit of SPI's fund do > cost money, and if DebConf wants those transactions being audited > externaly then it only seems fair to me they pay parts of those costs. See above for my reasoning, I'm very much in support of this stance. -Daniel > > Given the above, i will definitely vote against such a resolution. > > Best regards, > Martin > -- > Martin Zobel-Helas <zo...@spi-inc.org> > Software in the Public Interest, Inc. | Member of the Board of Directors > GPG Fingerprint: 6B18 5642 8E41 EC89 3D5D BDBB 53B1 AC6D B11B 627B > _______________________________________________ > Spi-general mailing list > Spi-general@lists.spi-inc.org > http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general -- Daniel Vetter Software Engineer, Intel Corporation http://blog.ffwll.ch _______________________________________________ Spi-general mailing list Spi-general@lists.spi-inc.org http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
