More women in key positions ?
Hi Mehdi, Gergely and Neil, thanks for being candidates to this election ! You probably noted that no woman was candidate this year, and that no woman was appointed to the technical committee in the recent replacements. Do you think that it is a problem that there are no women in key positions in Debian ? If yes, what do you plan to ameliorate the situation as a DPL ? Have a nice week-end, PS: please CC me for your replies, I am not subscribed. -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150321035005.ga10...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: Q to all candidates: spending money
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 08:58:35PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Neil McGovern ne...@debian.org [2015-03-20 19:39 +0100]: However, let me be clear: I intend on spending /more/ than that surplus. I would like our reserves to be at a lower level than they are now. Why? What target level are you aiming for and what's the rationale? A reasonable approach might be to set a budget for expenses as a percentage of the previous reserves (plus any explicit fundraising, eg sponsorship of debconf). SPI numbers for 2014 look something like: - earmark at 2014/01/31: ~$195k (dc14: $12k) - earmark at 2015/01/31: ~$188k (dc14/15: $32k) - non-dc14 expenses feb 2014-jan 2015: ~$40k 40k is about 21% of $190k, so just saying we'll spend about 21% of our reserves could be plausible. If we had a stable income, then adopting that process would lead to a steady state where reserves are about 4.8 times whatever Debian's annual income is. It looks to me like Debian's ex-debconf SPI income is somewhere in the range of $40k to $60k per annum? So if you wanted to have a reserve of $100k (ie 2x income), that would involve spending 50% of the reserve each year -- so $94k from $188k this year, $72k from $144k next year, $61k from $122k the year after etc, trending to $50k from $100k. (Note that this breaks down if you want a reserve = annual income: it'd imply spending 100% or more of reserves. You could address that by budgetting in quarterly or monthly cycles instead of annual though. So maintaining a 40k reserve on a 40k annual income might mean maintaining a 4x reserve on a 10k quarterly budget, so each quarter you can spend 25% of the reserve, rather than each year spending 100% of the reserve) Also, you intend to spend more than surplus, which at the moment you could. What about next year's DPL, or the year after that? I think the above offers a reasonable approach there. Still warrants deciding what the desired ratio between income and reserves should be though. Cheers, aj -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150321054421.ga8...@master.debian.org
Re: Q to all candidates: spending money
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:08:02PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Lucas Nussbaum lu...@debian.org [2015-03-12 10:16 +0100]: All candidates: how will you reconcile that with the fact that the DPL currently only has a limited vision of what funds are available, and how they evolved over time? All candidates: what do you think about outsourcing some of the gruntwork related to accounting and treasury to professional agencies? The goal here would be to free up our volunteers to develop Debian and actually force us into more discipline. My general rule on expenditure is: 1) Is it important that it happens? 2) Is the cost sensible? 3) What problems will we have if we don't spend the money? 4) If it was my /personal/ bank account, would I want to spend that money? If that all passes, then sure, let's spend it. In this particular case, my main concern is that we don't have the input data available to a bookkeeper, or accounting agency. What we're doing isn't /that/ complicated in terms of finance, we don't have multiple cost centres, or particular investment portfolios. I'd be more sympathetic to funding someone (perhaps via an internship, or gap year student who's going on to accountancy) to help set up a system so we can track it easier, but only if we woudn't be wasting their time with them simply pinging TOs for data, and not getting replies. Neil -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Q to Neil: PPA
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 09:57:28AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: Neil, in your platform, you advocate PPAs and modernising our build and infrastructure. What's the DPL's role in this? Or, put differently, couldn't you just start working on this without the DPL hat? Why not? What's the difference here? I think this to be two-fold. Firstly, by putting it explicitly in my platform it makes it clear that it's a high priority item for the project if I'm elected as DPL. If people don't view that as something important, than that's fine too - we have other candidates who I'm sure would love your first preference vote :) Secondly, the DPL position holds the ability to influence external parties more than others. The conversations we can have to try and get external interest in getting this (finally) off the ground is much easier as DPL than not. Neil -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Q to all candidates: dropping SC §5
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 05:01:57PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: Dear candidates, do you think the time is ripe for dropping section §5 of the Debian Social Contract [1], namely Works that do not meet our free software standards or should we wait more? I don't think it's time to drop this section. There's a balance to be struck between encouraging use of free software, and a more ideologically purist view that only free software should exist. In the latter case (one which the FSF has been characterised as supporting, possibly unfairly at times) then it's an absolute position. However, I think this does a disservice to the users, and free software in general. I would rather Debian is spread, and more people use free software that may require non-free works, than to reject them completely. This doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to make §5 obsolete! Great work has been done to try and remove non-free blobs from the kernel, for example. I would love to run Debian on all systems without the need for firmware on open hardware, but that day has not yet come. Until it does[0], we should keep section 5. Neil [0] I genuinely believe that this will happen, one day. But it certainly isn't going to be in the immediate future. -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Q to all candidates: spending money
also sprach Neil McGovern ne...@debian.org [2015-03-20 19:27 +0100]: I'd be more sympathetic to funding someone (perhaps via an internship, or gap year student who's going on to accountancy) to help set up a system so we can track it easier, but only if we woudn't be wasting their time with them simply pinging TOs for data, and not getting replies. Let's assume they'd be wasting time pinging TOs for data and not getting replies. What would you do in that case? -- .''`. martin f. krafft madduck@d.o @martinkrafft : :' : proud Debian developer `. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems a cigarette is the perfect type of pleasure. it is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. -- oscar wilde digital_signature_gpg.asc Description: Digital signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/sig-policy/999bbcc4/current)
Re: Q to all candidates: spending money
also sprach Neil McGovern ne...@debian.org [2015-03-20 19:39 +0100]: However, let me be clear: I intend on spending /more/ than that surplus. I would like our reserves to be at a lower level than they are now. Why? What target level are you aiming for and what's the rationale? Also, you intend to spend more than surplus, which at the moment you could. What about next year's DPL, or the year after that? -- .''`. martin f. krafft madduck@d.o @martinkrafft : :' : proud Debian developer `. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems and if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear you shout and no one seems to hear and if the band you're in starts playing different tunes i'll see you on the dark side of the moon. -- pink floyd, 1972 digital_signature_gpg.asc Description: Digital signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/sig-policy/999bbcc4/current)
Re: Q to all candidates: fundraising
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:09:37PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: Question(s) to all candidates: What is your perception of fundraising in and around Debian? Short of DebConf (and more recently Outreachy), we don't do anything of significance. If anything, what changes would you like to help implement? I don't think that Debian has ever really needed to raise funds in a significant way, for ongoing costs at least. Also see Gergely's answer for general ideas around fundraising, he's picked up on some of the main ideas I would look for in dedicated fundraising (matching, stretch goals etc all work well). Again though, if there's something that someone wants to do to improve what we do, then let's do that. Neil -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Q to all candidates: spending money
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 08:56:23PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Neil McGovern ne...@debian.org [2015-03-20 19:27 +0100]: I'd be more sympathetic to funding someone (perhaps via an internship, or gap year student who's going on to accountancy) to help set up a system so we can track it easier, but only if we woudn't be wasting their time with them simply pinging TOs for data, and not getting replies. Let's assume they'd be wasting time pinging TOs for data and not getting replies. What would you do in that case? If a TO can't give us useful data about income and expenditure in a timely manner, that's not acceptible. We should drop the TO unless improvements happen. Neil -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Q to all candidates: spending money
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 08:58:35PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Neil McGovern ne...@debian.org [2015-03-20 19:39 +0100]: However, let me be clear: I intend on spending /more/ than that surplus. I would like our reserves to be at a lower level than they are now. Why? What target level are you aiming for and what's the rationale? Hopefully https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/03/msg00308.html helps explain :) Also, you intend to spend more than surplus, which at the moment you could. What about next year's DPL, or the year after that? Future DPLs could chose to also fundraise, or spend in different areas. I'm not going to carry a large reserve now, because there may be future unspecified needs, especially when history has shown that we're not that these future needs don't seem to occur... Perhaps for clarity: This is /not/ a sustainable funding stream. We have reserves which I believe are too high for our income/expenditure, and I believe that should be spent to further the project. This isn't something that should be used for long term commitments with a unavoidable recurring cost. Neil -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
