Re: [gentoo-dev] Server hardaware give away (misc archs)

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 7:51 AM, Johnson Steward <i@××××××××.moe> wrote:
> Well, I guess the owner of the machines may want them to be under personal
> possession, be taken care of personally and, hopefully, extend the love he
> has with them even though he had to part with them. Sentiment towards old
> friends, you know :)
>

The obvious issue is that the Foundation could spend a lot of money on
shipping/parts/etc for something like this and then the person who
owns the device could decide the next day to not use it for Gentoo.

Obviously there can be a balance.  If the hardware is Foundation owned
and hosted by Infra then it seems pretty obvious that Gentoo should
just foot the bills (and can of course solicit donations to help with
this).  This is basically what already happens with a lot of Infra's
gear, though some of that is also donated so that somebody else is
generously footing the bills.  The Foundation has a planned budget for
these kinds of expenditures and it is largely administered by Infra
(we're not waiting for Trustee meetings to go replacing failed RAID
drives and such).  Pretty much any serious organization handles
routine spending in this way.

On the other hand, if the costs are reasonably low there might not be
much risk in making some small payments to cover specific activities
that are likely to benefit Gentoo when the person receiving the
payments already has a history of doing work for Gentoo.  We print out
stickers and CDs and hand those out at conferences and we don't ask
what the recipients do with them.  Not every expenditure has to be
100% airtight.

I just wouldn't expect the Foundation to pay somebody $2k to buy
hardware for what amounts to their own personal use.

In any case, as was already done you should just submit a bug and ask,
and the trustees can figure out where to draw the line.

-- 
Rich