[steering-discuss] funding for system operations meeting

Hi David,

*Some* being the operative word... I never heard about this... Was it
publicized at all on the website mailing list and I missed it?

no, it was in first place a board decision of the German association, so it was published in their meeting minutes (in German). However, since it affects TDF, I wanted to raise the topic here.

In any case, if you do another one, could you maybe give me a
heads-up? It would have been interesting to meet other people
administering infrastructure for TDF.

This meeting was only an internal one for the existing admins, so we didn't spread the word too far. However, we might make a workshop for interested parties the next time.

Florian

Now you are getting me really confused.

Who decided what, and who is paying what ?

Norbert

Hi,

Now you are getting me really confused.

Who decided what, and who is paying what ?

the board of directors of the German association, which will stay an independent entity also after TDF has been funded, but in the meantime is the legal entity behind TDF, decided that in their board of director's meeting.

So, a decision by the German association, *not* by the TDF SC.

However, since more money then offered by the German association is needed, and the weekend was for the TDF admins, I'd like to ask if the SC is agreeing to spending some of the TDF money for it.

Florian

Hi,

> Now you are getting me really confused.
>
> Who decided what, and who is paying what ?

the board of directors of the German association, which will stay an
independent entity also after TDF has been funded, but in the meantime
is the legal entity behind TDF, decided that in their board of
director's meeting.

So, a decision by the German association, *not* by the TDF SC.

OK - that sounds as if the decision by the FrODev BOD was to expend the
1,000 euro from the FrODev account, not the the TDF account, yes?

However, since more money then offered by the German association is
needed, and the weekend was for the TDF admins,

Actual costs exceeded projection by 60%.

I'd like to ask if the
SC is agreeing to spending some of the TDF money for it.

Is the SC agreeing then to pay the entire 1,600 euro from the TDF fund
now, or just the 600 excess?

Thanks,

Drew

Ahh, so you're asking TDF to cover the 600 euro budget overrun. Now I get it :slight_smile:
Thanks for the clarification

Norbert

Hi Drew, *,

However, since more money then offered by the German association is
needed, and the weekend was for the TDF admins,

Actual costs exceeded projection by 60%.

Nope that's not true - there was no planning on how much it would
cost, there was the 1000€ approved form FrODev account to begin with.

It was clear from the beginning that the 1000€ would not cover all
expenses though (travel & accommodation). If that would have been a
planned limit, the number of participants would have had to be
restricted. Instead while people were of course hoping that the
overshoot would not be too high and thus approved by TDF they were
also prepared that they might only get a fraction of their expenses
compensated.

ciao
Christian

Hi,

OK - that sounds as if the decision by the FrODev BOD was to expend the
1,000 euro from the FrODev account, not the the TDF account, yes?

that's how I understood it. However, since the weekend was solely TDF-related, and the association doesn't get any donations right now, but TDF gets, I would even propose to take the money from the TDF account, which I find just fair.

Actual costs exceeded projection by 60%.

Positively said, many more people volunteered to work as admins, which is a good sign, so 60% cost exceeding shouldn't be a concern. Many other foundations I know have paid fulltime admins, so we can consider ourselves very happy that just travel funding is needed. :slight_smile:

Is the SC agreeing then to pay the entire 1,600 euro from the TDF fund
now, or just the 600 excess?

I would indeed propose the former one, to be honest.

Florian

Hi,

Ahh, so you're asking TDF to cover the 600 euro budget overrun. Now I get it:-)
Thanks for the clarification

actually, I would like to ask to cover everything from the TDF account, as this would be fair.

Of course, if the German association wants to spend the 1,600 € from their account, then only the 600 € are needed, but from my gut feeling, paying everything from the TDF account would make more sense to me.

Florian

Hi :slight_smile:
So the work was done for TDF but the decision to do the work was taken by one of
the communities.

I thought the event was a different one. One that had been discussed in here.
I remember people using the mailing list to meet up for further discussion at
the end of one of the days but i guess that was a different event?

Since TDF does have plenty of money to cover the short-fall i think it should.
We don't want to discourage people from doing work that benefits TDF! I do
agree with David's earlier post that it would be good for the SC and BoD know
about events in advance.

If the SC or BoD had been asked in advance then i'm fairly sure they would have
agreed to pay about half if the other half was being paid by a community group.
The problem is that the decision should have been put to the SC/BoD in advance.
I think agree to it this time but avoid it in the future?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
for the full amount this time because TDF can afford it this time.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I don't disagree that, based on the agenda and participants, it would
make more sens, but then why didn't you put the initial budget
proposal in front of the TDF SC rather than the 'German Association'
board ?

(anyway, my quibbling was triggered by the notion that one should
translate German minutes of another association to be informed on what
is going on at TDF :slight_smile: )

Norbert

Hi :slight_smile:
I think the SC just voted on the 600 euroes excess. I think the full amount
might need another vote. Coincidentally i think there is an Sc Meeting
tonight(?) so it could be done quite quickly there? Perhaps vote on the full
amount first and if that gets defeated then vote on the excess?

I think there also needs to be some thought about Base. Should it be dropped
from LO since it's not getting any attention? If TDF wants to keep Base is it
prepared to recruit an employee as a dev or legal expert or team-leader (or a
bit of all those) to properly build a good team to deal with the vast amount of
complex issues that Base is suffering from? I think the money is there and
should be used. I think Some supporters such as RedHat, Cannonical and Google
might be willing to help but i think TDF needs to drive it.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi,

I don't disagree that, based on the agenda and participants, it would
make more sens, but then why didn't you put the initial budget
proposal in front of the TDF SC rather than the 'German Association'
board ?

the initial funding was an offer by the German association, like we fund many other events in Germany, so there was initially no need to discuss it with the SC. However, after seeing that we need more money, and thinking about it again, I thought it made more sense to take all money from the TDF account, out of the reasons outlined.

(anyway, my quibbling was triggered by the notion that one should
translate German minutes of another association to be informed on what
is going on at TDF :slight_smile: )

No. :slight_smile: The problem is that FrODeV and TDF are legally the same entity, but both have their own topics on the agenda, which makes things a bit complicated until TDF is an own entity. :slight_smile:

Florian

Hi,

I think the SC just voted on the 600 euroes excess. I think the full amount
might need another vote. Coincidentally i think there is an Sc Meeting
tonight(?) so it could be done quite quickly there? Perhaps vote on the full
amount first and if that gets defeated then vote on the excess?

so, I state the vote once again:

I'd like to ask the SC for a full funding of the occured 1,600 € from the TDF bank account, as I think it makes more sense to use TDF funds for a TDF related event.

In case the German association really wants to pay from the association's bank account, I would only pay the excess of 600 € from the TDF account, otherwise the full amount.

Thoughts?

I think there also needs to be some thought about Base. Should it be dropped
from LO since it's not getting any attention? If TDF wants to keep Base is it
prepared to recruit an employee as a dev or legal expert or team-leader (or a
bit of all those) to properly build a good team to deal with the vast amount of
complex issues that Base is suffering from? I think the money is there and
should be used. I think Some supporters such as RedHat, Cannonical and Google
might be willing to help but i think TDF needs to drive it.

Please post this as a new thread, as otherwise people will simply overlook it.

Florian

Hi,

I've no particular opinion about the funding, but I did regret having
missed the opportunity to have met the project's sysadmins, and I was
disappointed that it was a thing not decided with the knowledge and
possible involvement of the international community of web resource
contributors, but with only discussion between German members.

While I recognize that there are many German sysadmins in the project,
I do hope that it's not going to become a habit that things be
organized purely between them, because there are actually other people
working on webby things. Please do remember the spirit and intentions
of the Community Bylaws.

Hi David,

I've no particular opinion about the funding, but I did regret having
missed the opportunity to have met the project's sysadmins, and I was
disappointed that it was a thing not decided with the knowledge and
possible involvement of the international community of web resource
contributors, but with only discussion between German members.

While I recognize that there are many German sysadmins in the project,
I do hope that it's not going to become a habit that things be
organized purely between them, because there are actually other people
working on webby things. Please do remember the spirit and intentions
of the Community Bylaws.

of course, we do, but that meeting was a nonpublic one on purpose.

We really wanted to get a lot of work done concerning the admins, and we were busy all weekend long. Anyone outside of the admin group would have had a boring time. There was simply no time for "meet and greet", as harsh as it sounds. It was solely for those having root access, not for web site managers, as the technical topics were in-depth and detailed.

We definitely plan to have open meetings, but this meeting was really necessary to make the sysadmins work together, so it was reserved for this group.

Hope you understand what I mean and it doesn't sound too harsh. :slight_smile:

Florian

hey florian im just curious how does one get to be a system admin? Is it limited to those people in germany or can people such as myself based in malta help out as a systems admin as well?

Hi Florian,

It was solely for those having root access, not for web site managers, as
the technical topics were in-depth and detailed.

Yes, well given that you have root access to my server, it would have
been good for me to talk to you about some "in-depth and detailed"
issues.

We definitely plan to have open meetings, but this meeting was really
necessary to make the sysadmins work together, so it was reserved for this
group.

"Work together"? And with the outside world, too, I hope! I posted a
request/proposition to the admins on the website ML a week ago and
still did not get even an answer. I notice sometimes that getting some
attention and cooperation from the libreoffice.org admins is like
trying to get blood out of a stone (and I'm not just talking about my
own posts, others seem to get the same mileage sometimes). So I hope
you at least talked about that kind of in-depth issue too. :wink:

Precisely the problem seems to be that the sysadmins are a closed
group, unlike other teams in the project, and simply don't seem to
work in the same way as other teams. They might be managing key
infrastructure but it's not a reason for working differently - in fact
quite the opposite, they should be especially attentive to working
openly.... it's not a good tendence, IMO.

Hi,

hey florian im just curious how does one get to be a system admin? Is it
limited to those people in germany or can people such as myself based in
malta help out as a systems admin as well?

there is no defined process so far, and basically, of course, everyone is welcome from any country - the fact that it's just Germans is a pure coincidence.

However, at the moment, we have a group of 10 people, and I am a bit hesitant of adding more people to this core group. The core group has full root access to all our systems, and it should be kept rather small. This does not mean, of course, that we do not need help in maintaining individual services like website & co.

Florian

Me im not so much into web design and coding, me im more of a technical server side guy.