I think this is a dangerous policy, as it actively discourages volunteering. Why would I volunteer when I could be paid? Should I have a budget for writing this email? Is it something I think the project needs? What you've defined there is a company, not a community oriented project.

I think a more appropriate measure is that we should fund things that empower our members to be effective at achieving their goals on the project. Keeping focus on Inkscape members and helping them makes sure that we keep or focus on the most important thing, the community that is around the project. We should break down the barriers for those folks.

1. The release manager stipend isn't currently needed, Marc's employer

is kindly covering this expense and it's noted here in case we need to

have this item in consideration for future budgets.

Marc, do you know if your HR would give a number for the effective cost to them? Not just your salary, but the cost of benefits, payroll taxes, vacation, etc. that they are effectively donating. Not sure about how that works in the French public sector, but usually US companies have an estimate there. It would be useful to know/track.

2. We have one Outreachy internship unused from last cycle, this

coming year we will likely only need at most one more. This earmark

should cover that.

If we think we are going to do two Outreachy interns a year I think it'd be better to budget that and then record a credit from the previous year. It'll make it easier to see year over year.

3. We lack a documentation lead, or any contributor able to step up

and look after documentation. If there's anyone you can remember from

the past who'd be interested in getting involved, we've earmarked a

small budget to help with costs for that area should we need it.

This seems weird to me. If we have no idea what we're going to do and who is going to do it, suggesting there should be money for it seems backwards. Not against documentation in general, but just throwing money on a spreadsheet doesn't do anything. It feels "money lead" instead of "community lead." I would hate for someone to join the project with the sole purpose to spend money.

Each of the items require another meeting to discuss their details

further. This is especially true of the two big ticket items for the

admin and the developer budget.

Great to see how this breaks down, the numbers here seem pretty arbitrary right now. I think that we should have justification for our numbers. Certainly not down the penny, but some idea of why we came up with the number that we did as part of the documentation. There currently isn't enough information in the document to understand or comment on the specific amounts or line items.

Also, could you attach editable versions of attachments? We're OSS, we don't accept only compiled versions 😉 Personally, I like attaching PDFs as well because they're easier to read on a small screen like a phone, but the source document is the most important.

Ted