Re: GNOME Travel Committee & Travel Policy: A proposal for consideration and feedback

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi Claudio,

Claudio Saavedra wrote:
> El mar, 17-02-2009 a las 15:32 -0700, Stormy Peters escribió:
>> I think the 200 € was intended to apply to GUADEC. GUADEC is most of
>> our travel money. But it could be set on a case by case and could even
>> be lowered or waived on a case-by-case basis.
> 
> Seriously, I don't like this. Telling a student who's been contributing
> on his free time to the project that he needs to request special
> consideration if he can't afford those 200 € could even cause him not to
> apply at all.
> 
> I think GUADEC is a special kind of conference in the sense it needs to
> be inclusive, specially for people who is not so integrated in the
> community and for whom attending may have a huge impact on their
> involvement. Maybe hackfests and other local conferences may suit better
> for the approach you propose, but definitively not GUADEC.

What this comes down to, is what's the role of the foundation?

I think the role of the foundation is to support as much as possible as
many developers as possible in the GNOME community.

With a limited budget, the calculation is simple. The dollars only go so
far. And if the choice is between helping a lot of people a little, or a
few people 100%, I prefer to do the former.

What Stormy's proposed (with my input, among others) is a way to have
some baseline for the participation which is reasonable for an
international flight. She's said that the baseline shouldn't be an
absolute obstacle to getting subsidised. But the reality is the one I
outlined: with a limited budget, the goal should be to help more people
a little, rather than help a small number of people a lot.

I have the exact opposite opinion of you when it comes to hackfests, by
the way: in that case, we are gathering key people together, asking them
to take time out of their schedule for the greater good of the
community, and travel to work on a community project. I can't imagine
going to ask someone to come to a meeting without being prepared to
cover travel expenses.

On the other hand, for GUADEC, the people who are requesting funding are
coming to the foundation, and asking for help. In that situation, I
think it is entirely reasonable that the requester pay part of their
way. Especially for people who are, in your words, not so integrated in
the community - I'd prefer to ensure the presence of a contributing
hacker than use limited foundation funds for outreach and recruitment
for our one annual conference.

Cheers,
Dave.


-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org