Re: Sponsorship for hackfests

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 11:44 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

> > You are already planning to start paying a sysadmin.
> 
> I'm against this particular expense, I don't think we can afford it.
> 
> > In a similar way
> > I'm guessing you can pay a journalist writing the articles and editing
> > the interviews.
> 
> Budget = trade-offs. More money for paying people = less money for
> air-fares.

Why would for example the mobile vendors use upstream infrastructure if
it's constantly slow or broken? In that case, they wont. Isn't this what
we all want to avoid?

> > Don't pay them unless you have your interviews. You can even make a
> > contract that says that. I also don't see what would be wrong with
> > making clear agreements with participants. Especially not if every
> > participant knows why the agreement is made. If the context of the
> > agreement is reasonable, most of them will (I think) agree.
> 
> You may have missed the recent animated debate on the sponsorship
> agreement which Stormy drafted for travel sponsorship? Adding extra
> conditions to being reimbursed is likely to have people up in arms. The
> role of the foundation is to help the GNOME project to function and
> develop as much as possible.
> 
> I'm not completely against something like this, but I don't think it's
> politically or practically feasible.

But if we need absolute agreement with every single individual involved
in GNOME, we'll be a lame-duck just like the UN is. Caused by vetos of
its permanent members. And that organization has just five of them. We'd
have hundreds.

People who don't understand that building something together means
making compromises aren't the people who are going to produce much
anyway. So why would we give a veto to such people?

An animated debate just means that we have healthy meme competitions
going on. It doesn't mean that we must refrain from making decisions.

And yes, some people will be so angry that they'll leave. You can't do
good for everybody. Bad luck. Life goes on.


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
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