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On Thursday 22 September 2005 01:27 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: |
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> I think a PR (and infra) budget would be a good idea. Even for |
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> expenditures that need to be requested. I feel that for this budget a |
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> year plan should be made with the PR activities and their expected costs. |
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> This would ensure that there is budget left at the end of the year. |
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|
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Given that there are no trends to look at in terms of previous budgets it may |
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be hard to say what expected costs are. It can always be guestimated though. |
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And yes, keeping funds at the end of the year is a good idea. |
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|
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> On the topic of PR I also feel that the mean purpose private persons |
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> donate money for is to further the development of gentoo. PR does not |
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> directly relate to that goal. If we look at other sources of donations |
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> such as genesi and other companies, they would probably be interested in |
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> PR. I feel the budget should reflect this, and not all money left after |
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> legal fees and infra should go to PR, but some way should be found to use |
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> it to help development of the distribution. And of course some part |
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> should go to reserves. |
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I have to disagree here. And let me preface that by saying that a big part of |
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PR should be "Promotion". I think that promotion of Gentoo is an important |
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aspect of furthering the development of Gentoo. Through promotion you work |
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to inject users into this economy we have of developers, users, and a distro. |
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A growing user base is going to in turn draw more developers in, and the |
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developers are doing this because there are users using it. |
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|
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PR also has an important task in educating users (and developers). Take the |
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GWN for example. I feel it is a critical part of Gentoo. It doesn't take |
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any money to operate that, but then again nothing in Gentoo has up to this |
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point. With a bit of money more doors of possibility open up. |
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As for reflecting the purpose of donations in our budget/reports, I don't feel |
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this can be accomplished. I would have no problems with my donations being |
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used for PR stuff (or even for, say, giving every dev a Gentoo t-shirt), but |
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someone like you may. The money is given unconditionally, and then it is up |
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to the board to decide what to do with it. Obviously, if the board is being |
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frivilous with it and we don't have money for an emergency whereas we could |
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have, they should/would get ousted at the next election. |
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|
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Cheers |
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|
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-- |
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Corey Shields |
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Gentoo Linux Infrastructure Team |
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Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees |
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http://www.gentoo.org/~cshields |