Re: Proposed resolution: Waive SPI 5% administrative fee for 2020 associated project conferences

Hi all,

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:01 AM Martin Zobel-Helas <zobel(at)spi-inc(dot)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 <zobel(at)spi-inc(dot)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
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--
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch