Hi, a few more thoughts to sum things up:
In general, paying travel, lodging and other costs (expenses) for community members is a good thing, I'm all for it, given certain rules are met.
Payment for volunteer work should never occur. It is just too risky, we cannot satisfy everyone's needs and requests. There might be rare exceptions where we should nontheless pay for work time, but these need to have a compelling reason.
In many cases, things cannot be done by volunteer work. Then, funding for a commercial company/service provider should be granted. However, these companies are usually not part of the community, so payment is not going to a volunteer. Otherwise, volunteers simply could reject volunteer work, but offer contracted work through their company instead, which is not desirable.
Things like the summer intership programme and the documentation bounty are on the one hand bad, because money is given for people's work of one, two or three months, while long-term contributors to OOo are never paid. However, these contests serve more needs: They give lots of attention to the media, and they are usually meant to attract new volunteers. Therefore, I can agree with paying for work time as part of these contests.
You see, this is indeed a "hot topic" and we should discuss wisely and sensitive...
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