| 1 |
On Thursday 22 September 2005 01:27 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: |
| 2 |
> I think a PR (and infra) budget would be a good idea. Even for |
| 3 |
> expenditures that need to be requested. I feel that for this budget a |
| 4 |
> year plan should be made with the PR activities and their expected costs. |
| 5 |
> This would ensure that there is budget left at the end of the year. |
| 6 |
|
| 7 |
Given that there are no trends to look at in terms of previous budgets it may |
| 8 |
be hard to say what expected costs are. It can always be guestimated though. |
| 9 |
And yes, keeping funds at the end of the year is a good idea. |
| 10 |
|
| 11 |
> On the topic of PR I also feel that the mean purpose private persons |
| 12 |
> donate money for is to further the development of gentoo. PR does not |
| 13 |
> directly relate to that goal. If we look at other sources of donations |
| 14 |
> such as genesi and other companies, they would probably be interested in |
| 15 |
> PR. I feel the budget should reflect this, and not all money left after |
| 16 |
> legal fees and infra should go to PR, but some way should be found to use |
| 17 |
> it to help development of the distribution. And of course some part |
| 18 |
> should go to reserves. |
| 19 |
|
| 20 |
I have to disagree here. And let me preface that by saying that a big part of |
| 21 |
PR should be "Promotion". I think that promotion of Gentoo is an important |
| 22 |
aspect of furthering the development of Gentoo. Through promotion you work |
| 23 |
to inject users into this economy we have of developers, users, and a distro. |
| 24 |
A growing user base is going to in turn draw more developers in, and the |
| 25 |
developers are doing this because there are users using it. |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
PR also has an important task in educating users (and developers). Take the |
| 28 |
GWN for example. I feel it is a critical part of Gentoo. It doesn't take |
| 29 |
any money to operate that, but then again nothing in Gentoo has up to this |
| 30 |
point. With a bit of money more doors of possibility open up. |
| 31 |
|
| 32 |
As for reflecting the purpose of donations in our budget/reports, I don't feel |
| 33 |
this can be accomplished. I would have no problems with my donations being |
| 34 |
used for PR stuff (or even for, say, giving every dev a Gentoo t-shirt), but |
| 35 |
someone like you may. The money is given unconditionally, and then it is up |
| 36 |
to the board to decide what to do with it. Obviously, if the board is being |
| 37 |
frivilous with it and we don't have money for an emergency whereas we could |
| 38 |
have, they should/would get ousted at the next election. |
| 39 |
|
| 40 |
Cheers |
| 41 |
|
| 42 |
-- |
| 43 |
Corey Shields |
| 44 |
Gentoo Linux Infrastructure Team |
| 45 |
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees |
| 46 |
http://www.gentoo.org/~cshields |
Archives