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

Hello Michael, Martin, all,

I personally agree that inconsistently charging the 5% fee is unacceptable,
but
not with the proposed remedy. I would rather suggest explicitly granting
amnesty
on past omissions (assuming no technical objections such as from the
auditors),
and enforcing the 5% universally pending any future change in policy.

Aside from DebConf 2016-2019, are any other SPI project conferences which
paid 5% fees on their conference income? If so, as Martin points out it
would be
unfair to only refund DebConf. If not, the proposal should be reworded.

Other important questions: What is the approximate amount of missing 5% SPI
fees potentially owed by DebConf (and other projects)? What is the
approximate
amount of collected 5% conference income SPI fees collected by DebConf (and
others) which might be refunded?

Thank you,

Peter

(Speaking personally, and not as president and former treasurer for the Open
Bioinformatics Foundation, nor on behalf of any other SPI project.)

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:21 AM Martin Zobel-Helas <zobel(at)spi-inc(dot)org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon Jun 08, 2020 at 23:55:03 +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> > 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/)
>
> Also our reports that we publish since 2016 contain this information:
>
> "Per project donations have a debit amount specified, which is the SPI
> 5% contribution from the project towards the SPI general fund. Thus
> total donation amount is net of this contribution."
>
> So if DebConf would had cared more about it, they should have seen this
> already back in 2016 or 2017.
>
> 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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