On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 09:43:33PM +0100, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 11:48 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 09:57:03PM -0600, Ted Gould wrote:
On Sat, 2012-11-17 at 20:05 +0100, Johan Engelen wrote:
Note that I don't have much knowledge of Inkscape's financial affairs. I don't know how much money Inkscape needs, and if we actually need the money or not.
In general, I'd describe our finances as "don't have a lot of money, but don't need a lot of money." We don't have anything that way pay regularly, but we do get in money from GSoC and Packt and donations. Generally we've used that kinda ad hoc for things as they've come up.
Yeah, we get just enough income that it keeps us busy managing it, but not enough income to do interesting things with it. I think it amounts to a few thousand a year; I'd guess roughly half is from the GSoC $500/mentor payments, so varies a lot depending on whether mentors contribute or keep that.
So, it's a non-trivial amount, but not really enough to for instance pay for everyone's airfare or pay a developer's salary.
We should really have this publicly available on our website.
Most of what we'd have as costs otherwise are gotten through free services. We use Launchpad and Sourceforge for a lot of our server costs. The Conservancy donates its services to us. SFLC did the work for the trademark for us. etc. etc.
I think that we should probably come up with some ideas both on the generating and spending side of finances, but we don't have any today. Proposals welcome!
I agree, I'd love to see some proposals for putting some of this money to work. In particular, with what we have right now it'd be nice to see proposals for $1000-2000 increments.
I would like to see hacking session organized. The QuantumGIS group had a session at the Linux hotel in Essen:
Would you be interested in organizing such a hacking session?
That link looks like it would make for a very cost-effective option, I like it.
Offhand, I think to be fair the board might want to decide a standard $$/developer (and maybe a smaller standardized $$/attendee?) to fund per event for hacking sessions. The event organizer could then propose how to split that funding. So in cases where an upfront fee has to be paid to the hotel, less would be available per person, whereas in more cost effective option like linuxhotel, a larger portion can go towards food and travel costs.
Hacking sessions tacked onto the start or end of another event (like LGM) might be something worth considering as well, if someone would like to organize it.
There has been talk about holding fundraisers. If we had a good project proposal that would cost significantly more than what we have in the coffers, we might have good luck making it a public solicitation. People may be more interested in making donations to a specific targeted effort. What we need is a good plan and someone to get it organized and off the ground.
When I talked to Bradley Kuhn at the GSOC Mentor's meeting he offered to help us raise money once the agreement with SFC is updated. (Note, he has been much more responsive lately now that he is working at the SFC full time.)
True, if they're getting 10% of it, they'd have good motivation to help. With their help we could well end up receiving more than otherwise, which would be a nice win-win.
The update to the SFC agreements should also be discussed publicly. One of my short term goals is to get an updated board page on our wiki.
Thanks, that sounds like a sensible idea. If you could take the task of updating it periodically with stuff being discussed, I'd bet developers would appreciate it. Or even just a link to the list archives would help.
bryce