[Debian-sponsors-discuss] Moving proposals to consensus, and starting next round.

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 05:36:25AM -0400, Brian Gupta wrote:
> For those that like the freebsd foundation model, and/or raised it in
> the discussion, can you please elaborate on what is being proposed.
> Are we proposing to create a single-purpose Debian Foundation
> non-profit? Or are we looking to model the attribute of the
> FreeBSDFoundation of just having donors that have no tangible benefits
> other than perhaps a tax writeoff and a logo for certain sized donors?
> Having a million dollar budget? All of the above? Or something else?

So, as mentioned in [2], I was merely relaying an interesting discussion
I had with Tollef, who proposed the idea. Still, here is my
understanding about what that proposal is about.

> [2] - http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-sponsors-discuss/Week-of-Mon-20130304/000006.html

It is /not/ about setting up a new foundation, in the fiscal sponsoring
sense. It is rather about the model, where contributions by sponsors are
measured, made visible to give back to the sponsors, and put into some
sort of competition between them to be the highest sponsor. Also
donations are attached top an expiry date, so that year after year
sponsors have to donate again to remain in the same category, providing
to the underlying project some sort of stability on the income front.
That also allows to set fund-raising goals year after year, and be
public about that (think about the wikipedia progress bar or freebsd's
thermometer). All this works for both corporate sponsors and for
individual donors (an example of category system for the latter is FSF's
"Thank GNU" system).

Related to this discussion, of course, there are other discussions that
we've at least started, such as how to measure non-monetary donations
and make them fit into the general picture of "measurable donations".
Similar (difficult) thoughts exist for how long those donations should
last, e.g.: it is fairly easy to assess when a hosting donation ends,
but it is more difficult to assess when a "company maintains $STACK in
Debian" ends.  We might want not to measure non-monetary donations,
... or not. These are the tricky questions to answer anyhow.

Hope this clarifies,
Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack at upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader  . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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