 Okay, welcome again. So now we'll have a talk about the relationship between Debian and EPCOMF with Stefan and Zacharioli in Holger Levson Please welcome them so they well the background of this Session is basically the long outstanding issues issue of our Debian actually Debian relates to Debian What is the relationship between the morning of the two project the organization of the two initiative and All this kind of stuff and it is an issue that is been raised again like one month or before two months before this is Debian and Not having a clear answer to that kind of Make some kind of our relationship difficult like knowing whether Debian has the right between quotes of asking the over What was the name of the the money remaining from previous year at the beginning of the Debian release cycle Or not What is the appropriateness of asking more money to Debian for Debian and all these kind of issues? So I don't really have a specific agenda I just have a personal position of mine which I'd like to share and then we can have an open discussion and Hopefully reach a proposal on how it should be the relationship of the true the three initiative and Hopefully propose it on Debian team and having it clarified and written down for future Debian. So my Position on that is that Debian are essentially the same project for the very simple reason that Disponsor which give money to Debian give money to Debian on the basis that Debian helps Debian So I think that having a non-official Debian conference will actually reduce Significantly the money that Debian gets so for this reason I like to think of the true initiative of the same thing That does not mean that the organization should not be separate because I mean It's very useful to have Debian team during the conference organization I think nobody else will be able to do as good job as them So I just would like to clarify that Debian exists because of Debian and to support Debian So we I don't like to think them as two separate entities and The the difficult part is how to manage money, of course. So in my opinion that come should aim at being a Amortized the your budget conference that means that in the long run It should be a self-sustainable conference where sponsor money are enough to run the conference That does not mean that every single year the conference should be your budget It's completely normal that the conference in New York is more expensive than a conference in Argentina or anywhere else So it's okay. If one year we have money Which remains at the end of the conference and the other year we need more money than what we have and in the long run We are more tired that So the difficult part if we agree that Debian and Debian are part of the same project The difficult part is deciding a process of how Money are you Debian money are used to support that conference and like Asked in the beginning and then return and back later on. So this is a difficult part This is this I believe has been a problem this year because they have the impression that in the beginning Debian people thought that they could have asked whatever amount of money to Debian while on my side I was kind of scared that the all the remaining $70,000 from past that conference being exhausted completely and I was kind of worried that adding some more money to the On the table before not having some kind of guarantees So this is my position and I welcome comment on this. I don't know if Olga you want to add something. I Agree with what Stefan was said I'd like to add that I don't think that Should be decisions taken at at Debian without the usual Debian processes be it yeah without the usual processes and for this Bob I'd like to Define or talk about a process how we can Reach our goals which we define here, but they also should be discussed in future on the list or I see or whatever I'd like also to talk about the goals of depth conf like why are we doing this? my personal view is Getting people together because we work the whole year Remotely and so getting together and know each other is important part for me And also for the technical discussions to share that with the rest of the project We have 3,000 people working on Debian. I said on one slide and 300 are here So 90% are not here. So I think the video team is also very important for this And I should think that should be come taking into account when doing the conference And actually acknowledged in the goal of the conference. I believe yeah, I Think it's best of the audience passes on the mic so that the only one the person with the mic would speak I'm sure So I just want to open by thanking the depth conf team for all of their great work over the years And and make it absolutely clear that you guys have done a wonderful job putting on a great conference year after year And it continues to amaze me This experience which is like no other conference that I'm aware of that I've ever been to That said I share some of these concerns about debcoff being a separate organization from Debian Given that debcoff goes around asking Organizations to donate funds in Debian's name The organization should be directly accountable to Debian as a result And it should be integrated into our decision-making structures within Debian and I feel this very strongly and I think it's a Very painful bug that we've not had that in place now for several years Also, I do I Understand from from observing the the debcoff organization from the sidelines that there tends to be a lot of intra organizational politics and disagreements and those kinds of things which I Think Debian has enough of those already for everyone and if we could consolidate that perhaps we could make things run a little bit more smoothly and And Rather than having two organizations each with their own sets of political problems I just say I disagree actually with the premise of the title of the buff which says why is debcoff work? I think the actual question should be why do people behave as if debcoff is a fork I don't think it it ever truly has been a fork. I don't think it is now But I agree there's a lot of aspects of debcoff which are Individually forked from the process in Debian some of those I should say just to say it's not it's not all It's not the intentional things necessarily from debcoff people because in some cases it's where the normal debcoff Normal Debian way of doing things or even for something being kind of Too quiet or non-existent and therefore debcoff people have invented one So in some cases if there had been perhaps a more active for example the extreme case if there was if there was an extremely active Debian funding fund raising team that had existed before debcoff probably people wouldn't have thought of inventing a separate Debcoff spongeship team Maybe you were just integrated in the same thing if the Debian press team Where I had always every year been active on things you wouldn't think of inventing a debcoff press team But certainly from my point of view having two men having sort of all this duplication of things It just doesn't make sense. I mean I definitely agree that ever In although I don't think it is a fork as such I think merging together these aspects as much as possible makes absolute sense I'd like to comment on the focus I set the title and realized today that the title is a bit wrong because there were delegations in 2006 by AJ when he was DPL so that was made clear But it's as you said it's not perceived as such we forgot about it and the current DPL didn't know So that's true. I don't want to monopolize the microphone too much I think Pablo is also waiting to talk But I just wanted to respond to one thing regarding teams not being available to do to do the work And therefore there were other teams in that in parallel So one place where I think this there was not such a justification for creating separate structures and separate hierarchy is on the The infrastructure side regarding So the devconf.org domain for instance is not registered to Debian I don't think infrastructure in general is because there's certain people who like playing with machines Which is again not a negative reason but not really a justifiable reason for duplicating The entire debris and infrastructure for a devconf not only duplicating but without going into too much detail What I've heard is that for this conference the Infrastructure meant that certain things were not getting done that should have been that we should have been more Flexible and then we're going so that so sorry is someone taking notes of this buff Can someone do that Anna would you try so I kind of an action item on that So do we have a list of what is forked is what is not because I confess that okay? I'm pretty well aware of the Debian infrastructure and the Debian organization structure There is a there is a page which has the list of all the in terms of the technical infrastructure list of all the debcon So what what I was saying is that unfortunately? I'm never been involved in that conf org a team besides a being haven't been dragged in this year So if some of someone of the org a team is willing to do a list of what is actually forked And maybe providing a reason why it is they are for it would be good I believe that some of the reason were historical and I believe maybe nowadays most of them can be you know merged back But the first thing is You become DPL and you become very concerned about the finance of they've gone Particularly you arrive in a right time at the wrong time where we have such an expensive they've gone, but I Don't know. I mean to me they've come he's an amortized Conference, so you say the goal should be but actually the goal is and has been so I After looking about the fundraising and the budgets and stuff of previous years We are not running a gaping hole on our finances. I mean we started with 70 K from last year That's means an amortized thing right there. Well, yes, but Okay, I give you my point of view on that So first of all from the outside is not clear not only to me, but too many people is not clear That such a huge amount of Debian money were actually that cough money So I went when I become DPL. I look at the finance state of SPI and I found there 120,000 dollars. Okay, cool Then a few months later. I look it again and I found $50,000 so it's not that I'm cheap, but I Get this situation and I get $20,000 more asked for that cough you can understand that it's kind of scary and just just a second And it's not just me so I've seen comment on IRC by many people saying oh look Debian is as less than half of the money he used to have a few months ago Blame that that's that's actually the point because I'm on paper. They're responsible of Debian money But I was not part at all of the decision. So I'm not a control freak at all I just wanted to understand what was going on and the fact that I didn't know about that I'm sure it's kind of a good indicator that a lot of people in Debian Which are not involved in that configuration. A lot of those people were not aware either Well, but it does independent of running our mortise question Just how to communicate to the rest and having separate accounts actually would help them I think it's not not only this money thing There's like the decision process for choosing a new then not venue but location that we have We have criteria what then place has to have network and people should must be able to sleep there But who decides then that is that is step conf team Who is step conf team everybody on the mailing list on the IRC channel? This is not defined It's it's also the prop the problem was each year having a local team Which changes which is very very much responsible for making that conf run and usually that the local team Works as best that they can and they put very very much effort in it But there are some things With the changes every year they they don't get the full picture how a conference must be run if you start running a conference every year You've never done it before you might oversee some Good good things which are need which make the conference much better for example the time schedule here was Originally was planned to have talks from from full hour to full hour with zero break Which then was communicated to the speakers that is bad for the video team So it was five minute edit and it's not only bad for the video team It's also bad for the whole audience because it's better to be able to talk up about the talk to go to the toilet to do Whatever and that's not only what the video team needs to do but everybody So this I try to communicate it three or four or five times before the conference during the conference and nobody listened to me and There I would like to have experienced people having the power to override the local team say you cannot do this In the extreme cases that way more than one question the four comments you made One of the reasons I feel we have a duplication of steam is that you can't think of DevConf as a Mini Debian that makes a release every year at a given date So it's a different type of environment. We we need to make decisions So you see if we have if we were to run within the regular Debian the bureaucracy will kill us So One of the problems is that from the Debian side of things it looks to me as a Debian developer that there's not really a whole lot of Accountability to Debian which is not necessarily the same thing as bureaucracy But when I hear the DPL saying oh $70,000 came out of the Debian account with SPI and I don't know where it went I didn't know that was going to happen that concerns to be grave me gravely I I You know and we usually find out like how the money was spent on on Debian a full year after the fact is about how long It takes to produce the final report and and you know when we when we're saying we spent How much how much money did? Sorry, let me finish the question my question is Did does the amount of money that we Spent on debcoff this year did we bring in that much in donations or is there money out of Debian funds? And how much money are we down this year? We got more money than we We found raise more money No, we didn't fund rise more money than we that we are spending I don't know exactly how much we have a spell. I mean the numbers to talk We will we won't know the numbers until after death come but we have fun riding something like in 90 Even less 90 so song and only 90 so song is what we are what we are paying for Columbia for housing so No, my question is are we deficit spending no, we are not deficit, but We we raised about 90,000 and we've taken So 870,000 or more 80,000 from pre from Debian funds So we've raised this year about a pro as an order of magnitude half as much as we've spent So I have my comment on that so this yes this year that we confuse in deficit I think this is okay because we had left over from previous year so the point So the point the point is that we we completely used that those left over and those left over were like 70k So that's I mean in a view of amortizing zero spending. This is kind of okay What I don't so what I think is the problem is the The communication about that because so I asked Steve at the beginning of my term Okay, I'm kind of scared that come people use this kind of 70k Is that normal and Steve said well usually that come from gains more money than what they spend So those money will be back and in fact it turns out that those money will not be back So the problem is actually understanding what actually is the Who actually is the owner of that money? Yeah, exactly we've been through this with debcon for a few years running. I mean It's there's always a tradition in the last couple of months before the conference of a panic of oh Christ Where's the money coming from? And that's happened every single year. I've been involved in organization since like 2007 We knew full well that when we came to New York that we would need more funds than ever before to undebcon And we were hopeful of getting it Okay, this year. We've eaten into eating into the surplus from last year. Thankfully 2009 an extremador of course with the local government getting very involved. We did manage to build a big surplus I'm hoping and I hope them don't put sponsors off by saying this that we'll end up with a big surplus again next year Because of course if the local government in Bosnia are going to help support us We're still going to be going out hitting up sponsors for as much money as we can to try and build back that surplus say for the year after It's a cyclical thing At the risk of sounding blase don't panic about the money too much But yes, but we could be a lot more A lot clearer in terms of how how that stuff works So another comment on that which kind of replied to the question. Why don't we have separate bank accounts? So Having separate bank accounts will actually go completely against the idea that that conf is part of Debian and that conf exists because of Debian And there are two other reasons one of the other reason is that? so Steven the past has given money to Debian and that's okay because Okay, yes, absolutely, and that is okay, but if I mean if there is this money Flow from Debian to Debian so either we see Debian as a sponsor of Debian Which for me is a completely crazy and silly idea or those money should not be Considered in having a zero budget conference because if we aim to have a zero an amortized zero budget conference But each year Debian gives you know 20k for Debian Then it's not really a zero budget conference and amortized way So I think that Margaret did some computation and I correct me if I'm wrong that there have been a flow of 50k from Debian to Debian so I mean if we know there is this need is a thing because when I look at Debian money I can understand okay I should keep in mind that every year should give that amount that and that money to that But if there is no such you know written rule or something like that It's kind of difficult to plan what to do with Debian money and the final reason which for which I'm against having a Separate bank account. Let's imagine the worst possible scenario Let's imagine that all Debian service around the world crash at the same moment That's imagine that we get sued for whatever reason so at that point I think that Debian money should be used to you know as extreme measure and if we have separate accounts That's is not possible so a couple a couple of things Kind of is perspective because So I've been involved so I have I have no experience with Debian for its finances or how it runs But I've been involved for several years now in the FS and Kerberos workshop the best practices workshop Which we run as a conference attached to an open-source project And I know something at least about how the finances of that work and how that's has worked historically It's a smaller conference than this one by a fair bet and it's only three days But so just but just a few things related to that that are just kind of conference funding things to kind of put Debian perspective One is is that the last two years or have been brutal for finances for running a conference We ran we tried really hard not to run a deficit a year ago when we ran a deficit anyway We only didn't run a deficit this year because essentially the computer science department of UI you see gave us the entire conference venue for free So you're gonna lose money if you're running a conference or the long run you lost money last the last two years almost certainly The second it could it's just because of the global financial situation and everything else that's happened the other thing I was gonna note and In the the conferences do this that the money is very dynamic and it's hard to get a grasp on the finances because there are these very large Flows there's this huge flow in and there's huge flow out and you do have to be aware of that going in It's just kind of how the money works But the other thing is too is that you know the concern about having it take a while to finalize the finances for the for a conference If you're used to doing other kinds of accounting and other kinds of businesses that looks really strange My our experience with the workshop. That's what happens with conferences. It's really hard to finalize a budget It's really hard to produce a final report. It takes forever It takes way longer than you expect it to and so just as from an outsider just a couple of kind of perspective things I was just gonna say on the On the flows it definitely I mean although we've had this debacle surplus building up It has always been kind of less than that certainly than the money that had come in from Debian before so again from my point of view although it may make sense to Keep some pot that you're willing for debcom to spend from a kind of cash flow position to get that to get the conference going I don't really see it as being even though I want money for debcom I don't see it as being fair to say that this is Debcon of money that we've built up when actually a little bit come from general Debian friends in the first place also on the The cost for this year. Yes, New York was expensive But also somehow in the last six months or so there was a huge increase in the costs that we actually had compared to what we expected before including things like moving from There was a some decision some decision made again without without certainly any kind back to Debbie and to see about spending money about Moving from hostile accommodation, which would have been a fraction of the price of what we were paying here to using the Door on the switch are about more than a hundred dollars for each double room at night So some things like this It's pretty pretty large cost increases Just on the assumption that the money would come from somewhere, which is not necessarily a great I mean, I think it will it has worked out this year because we had a lot of money sitting around you can say it doesn't We don't there's no point to have Recreation whatever but is something we should look up for neck for future years to make sure that this we don't have this kind of Creeping inflation in the cost I Would like to say some numbers, but only if you are not going to only if Pablo is not going to take the number as for rising Oh, they say they stay with us the number. Don't worry. Just a few people in the room. I Want to say that I want to say that I understand that the full rising this year when grown and you really work very hard on that So it's it's not your fault or something that you thought that you were very little basically this year. We have rice and 92 so sound dollars from sponsors They've come nine rise something like 120 dollars Plus something like 40 so some dollars in a stuff we go from junta de Extremadura And they've come a rise something like 120 So some dollars. So this year we have raised very very few money So just a comment on the crisis last year. We were already in the crisis fear and this kind of stuff So is that's probably Yes, indeed. So I mean that confate was probably not that year. No, not there yet, but nine and ten Okay, it was already Last year we found that we didn't pay some stuff. It was pay for us that explains the large surplus So this year I said we raised ninety two so sounds We spend with a surplus from death con a and if con nine death con ace was something like six hundred dollars Not too much, but it was it was a bit less than we say before it was 70 76 so some dollars and then I am going to say that the two biggest expenses we have We are paying something like one so some dollars for housing and food Yeah, and then we are spending in traveling something like Almost 30 so some dollars so can't give you an idea of the numbers Another problem with the financing is Okay Deb conf being held in a different country every year has problems You know having it creates a local account in many many times Sometimes like last year we used FFIS for the main local funding and then SPI for the US funding and Debbie I mean Debian has that somewhat but Deb comp tends to have a big chunk of funds Have to go through some local currency and that complicates the financing Well, just a brief reply to that so FFIS is one of the trusted organization, which have Debian money I to my memory. I think the only time we created a different to be was in in the UK, right? Okay, so I think I mean this is not a problem specific to debcom Debian already has account around the world and I don't see I mean, that's a feature of my opinion. I thought would created one in Argentina and No, we have one in Brazil, but the Brazilian is money is used to fund sponsoring for Brazilian developers So the money is in debcom and it's just given out in Brazil. I Wanted to talk about the issue that you raised about the unexpected withdrawal from the Debian accounts and Wanted to make two points about that one is that here in the United States it's very very common for nonprofit organizations to have more than one checking account and bank account and For for Debian, maybe that doesn't make as much sense because the relationship with the SPI and these other organizations But if we did find that to be advantageous at some point, there would be no reason that we couldn't Pull funds from the account at whatever bank the debcom funds are in use them for Debian purposes because They would the accounts would still be under the name of Debian But the other thing that I wanted to suggest was that I think I Would not see it as a negative like you do to see a separate line on some sort of balance sheet Where we can say okay, you know here's at the bottom Here's the total amount of money that Debian has and here's some money in the that's been earmarked For debcom for whatever and then we can make it very explicit When we transfer money from the Debian general fund into the debcom fund that that's happened or if it goes in the other direction and I think that would Make it clear to somebody that's just looking at the balance statement that okay. We have you know hundred fifty thousand dollars But seventy thousand of it is Allocated for debcom and it's coming up in a month That's probably going to be spent soon, and I think it would make it fewer surprises for everybody I agree with you on that having more bank accounts is not the problem that that is not the issue The issue is who's responsible for the money and I think this this whole discussion now focus the last 20 minutes on money And that is that is not really the problem the money situation is the symptom of the problem that for example this this decision to spend to Spend money more money here on housing in Columbia, which is nice for the attendance creates a great atmosphere and it's Good for the whether For the one of the two goals we mentioned at the beginning the socializing part It's part. It's great So we are close here together on the other hand There was no money to pay guards downstairs So the video team couldn't get in here in the night to work So we were completely overworked and spending two or three thousand more dollars on paying guards Which saved the video team a lot of stress and if some there needs to be somebody Overseeing this and making the decision if you spend money on this there needs to be a budget for these guards So the video team can work for example that means that means we need the prioritization that what a step cons aims and to make sure These aims are taking off our met and I don't know what you think about the other parts Stefan on me raised in the beginning because we only talked about money So I would like to shift. Okay, so there's a field Steve and then I'll try to Well, I'm talking about something sort of related which is The sort of a month out from the conference pretty much every year. There's a crunch point where money is being spent and Sponsor coming in yet. So you sort of hit the bucket the bottom of the bucket About a month away just when we're deciding how many people to sponsor Which is a complete disaster because they're seeing their air travel prices going up and we need to decide that the day when we open the queues for sponsorship that every person that gets into that queue gets The money allocated straight away, even if that means that they can't go to bankrupt Because that is the non-optional bit of spending on debcom. Everything else is You know something that you can cut out the bill But if there's no one coming here The rest of it's pretty pointless and if we do it as we've done it in past years In a way that makes sure that everybody pays twice twice as much for their travel Then that's money down the toilet. So we we need to decide some way of saying Here's a criteria where if you fulfill these criteria, you'll get paid and unless debcom goes completely bankrupt Okay, so very quickly back to what Russ was saying about it's normal for conferences not to be able to get a final report out for a year I understand that and that's not I'm not saying that that's something I see as a problem I'm saying that given that this is the way things work. It's important for debcom to have a hand in overseeing things as it's ongoing Okay, so let me try to Move to a related point. I agree with Olga that the money is just a symptom and not the problem So let me try to see if at least in this room We agree on a couple of things and then of course we will post the question also to debcom team list or whatever more Up with the list that's the side that we do it on the team list Okay, so we will do that on the team list So question for the audience here Do we all agree that debconf and debia are true intimately related? You know structural project, whatever and these pointers to arbitrarily separate them is anyone against that idea Okay So the question is should Debian and debconf Be have the same structure. I mean having them. I I'm not really sure is that kind of part of debian Okay, that's thanks for the right question Is debconf part of debian do who is like who agrees that debconf is part of debian raise your hands So that means Okay, go ahead One one really great thing I've seen a debconf is having lots of non dds participate local team and do things like website maintenance And i'm concerned that if debconf is truly part of debian Okay, thanks for the laughing I think it's an important point to clarify that debconf should be open as debian should be open And you can contribute to debian without being a dd and debby we all We have several processes running to make debian more open And I always say that I came to the first two debcoms without being a dd without having any package I just came there because it was said It's free to attend for everyone. That's why i'm here because it was free to attend So i'm very much interested to keep this this open, but I think it must be clarified Yeah, in fact Last year's debconf and next year's debconf are not going to be organized locally by any dds We had no dds in extremadura. We have no dds in bosnia So yeah So would it be would it be fair to say that debconf exists for the benefit of debian as a project? Is it a better way to put it? So given my first question kind of sucked let me try with a second Do we agree that The the budget of the debian conference at debconf should be an amortized zero budget And in principle should be able to raise enough money from sponsors for that conference in the long run Can I my caveat on that is that I think personally if debconf has a huge surplus say say when we we managed to raise A vast amount more than we need I don't see necessarily that money needs to stay in a in a debconf bot So that's even more than exactly even I would go further I I disagree with what you just said as somebody who's worked Hard time trying to help Pablo with fundraising The idea and somebody who would like to stay involved in fundraising the idea that we That fundraising I believe it should be a continuing ongoing effort, you know and When you have a lot of money raised for fundraising For debconf and you're going to sponsors and telling them this is for debconf you know Talking with last year organized people organizing and to um ancestor when they found out how much money we have left what they say Oh Fantastic, you have that money for improving debian for debian They never say you have that money for nes defcon Maybe you you fund rise the money thinking on defcon only but they fund rise the money thinking in debian and that changed every year I think there are also other debbie in conferences like the mini debconf in india Whatever so we can also spend the money there. So this is actually my reason for doing all this but The thing is For getting about the money all we need to improve is the communication between debian and defcon Well, this is a substantial point. So asking ourselves Is the fundraising only for debconf or for debbing in general? This is a substantial point She's just attacking me. I Have fundraised every second for debian and I take it very very personal. She did that and I don't like it So I'm hoping she's gonna withdraw it but back to this thing If you will have to come to us and say in october last year the 70k you only have 20k We'll have organized a different conference, but you cannot come and say that to us on may We are not That's why we are saying that now for the future We're not we're not we don't want to judge or whatever about debconf 10 We want to lay the road for better future debcoms and debian project Organize the list feel steve and Elliot can I make the point that this is almost entirely academic because All the sponsorship money gets spent in complete completely spent every time just about I mean last year was unusual and if you add up all the previous amounts of debian money that's gone into debconf And take away whatever surplus we get next year. It'll be less. You know, there'll be more debian money in debconf than there is in The net flow is into debconf from debian And that means that You know, there is no debconf money I don't really see the point of arguing about it Well, I think that's precisely the point of arguing it is that this People have been saying, okay, that's 70k. That was surplus from last year It was surplus in part because in previous years the dpl has Committed debian funds to that. So that's not That's not the the debconf organization has a 70k surplus independent of debian It's it's in part because debian has has put up put given money up front In fact, I my understanding is with some expectation that As debconf continued to bring donations in that some of that money would be returned to debian And so it's a question of this expectation that if there is excess money after the end of fundraising Is that debconf's money or is that debian's money? And and I and I think it's very important that Whatever those excess funds are that those be debian funds and if if there's an expectation from the debconf Organization that they are going to need some of that money for the next year Then that should be a trivial approval process to get the dpl to talk to the dpl and say hey this we need X amount of money. It's it's just the problem is Having two different assumptions about whose money that is in the account and how it's Who's responsible for deciding it's it's how it's spent I just had a semantic note that I think it's very dangerous to talk about communication between debian and debconf If we agree that debconf is part of debian It may be better to figure out How the debconf organization should report to the dpl And how the dp what duties the dpl has to the debconf organization to enable them to be successful Just a semantic point on that so the dpl chooses how to spend debian money On behalf of the project. So I mean it's me with the sides, but in principle the decision is kind of agreed upon within the project Okay, and I think the other point is who is the the debconf team That is the other question is that everybody on the irc channel on the list And that is also this this question. Stefano just asked about the relationship and for the picture the Opinion in the room I would like to Finish this does not finish to to To come to a decision And we can have a decision Discussion in this room for hours and we can have a discussion on the mailing list for weeks And I I would like to ask you do you think making a gr is a good idea to us We're discussing that first of course What about what we wrote like it's it's the structures of the the whole conference what is How should we formalize This organization. Let me come back to that later after gunner well, uh I think a fundamental point to to So we can see it's obvious that it's the same thing that debian and debcovist I don't think any sponsor is interested in in giving money for us to spend nights two weeks Sponsors are giving money to make debian better. So It is debian money targeted or earmarked or whatever what you say For travel expenses for a large conference I would say I was talking with zack earlier I was suggesting Say separating formally the the funds that are Marked to belong to debcov And the funds that the project uses for other things just to to keep Like a guarantee that we're not going to spend a debcov assets on other things if I mean unless completely necessary and the opposite way that debcov is not going to eat all of debian savings I mean given it may be necessary at some point. So Even even separating smaller Meetings which are also necessary and are also debian funded Okay, so let me come back to a point made by olger and at the beginning of the conversation by steve So beside the money the problem is really deciding What is the the formal relationship between debian and debcov? So I knew I discovered from olger that there is still some open delegation Ajay to the debcov team. So do you think that form would is an appropriate form? Would it make sense to renew those delegation? Not to all the team because it's pointless to have 40 delegates for this kind of stuff But what it might make sense is to have two three person whatever from debcov world as you call team And those people are As it's usually happen entitled to decide the procedures internal debcov team And those people At that point we can decide whether they are entitled to spend a specific amount of money or whatever Would it make sense to renew those delegation and to have those people in charge of taking decision for debcov? Do you think it's appropriate? Raise your hand if you do think it's appropriate Do you think it's a good idea to renew the delegation? Yes, it's a good idea to renew those delegation and use this way to make this relation something formal Who think it's a good idea? Okay, so do you have a suggestion on what could be the content of the delegation? Or do you have a suggestion on other solutions? There should be delegation I mean, okay Oh, I mean, sorry just just a point for Steve So Steve made the right point that so the decision structure of debcov should be integrated in debcov But I think it's a red herring to think that we should all decide all together for debcov. It's impossible Okay, right, so we need some coins some abstraction there. What would be the good abstraction? um Well, I don't one thing I don't think the dpl I'm not even sure the dpl has the power to delegate it, but I don't think it should be delegated anyway is deciding to Like withdrawals of money from from the debian accounts I think that should be they that should be something that goes to the dpl for approval And if they say I need a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of debian money I don't care the granularity of it is not the issue. It's the oversight um But yes, certainly we should have delegations in place I don't know what bits are the appropriate ones to delegate Yeah, so one one one doubt I have about saying immediately to have a delegation on it is this question again about There's a slight danger that you perpetuate some of the the forking question because there are some parts so You could ask one one thing you could ask because even if you are having a delegation to a debcov team to organize debcov It's not necessarily the case that all of what debcov team has been doing should be part of that delegation Because for example Allocating out travel sponsorship to people you could perfectly well argue that there should be some General debian decision in this it doesn't need to be the same people who are deciding what How to arrange the house saying or this kind of question? Okay, so in your opinion, what are the right bits that should be part of that delegation I mean the only way we are we can arrive at deciding this is seeing the opinion of the involved people And you know find out something which is on which we can agree upon we have no other way to do that Do I do have any idea of? again, I think so If there was it's hard to say in one one problem is that it's hard to know whether some of the people who are currently working in a Debcov team are happy to switch into some merged debian team So for example, I mean Logically from my point of view, which seemed to make more sense to have a debian Whether it's a debian fundraising or debian conference fundraising team It doesn't need to be specifically for Just each annual debcov in principle However, it may be that the only way you motivate people to do it is by having this target So it's hard to say whether what actually works on that. I I've always avoided getting involved with that part Ashish hi, yeah I guess the thing that I'm most interested in here is how to have holger's concerns be responded to in good time that's So I'm not sure if delegation is relevant to that But what what I like about the delegation is that identifies a small number of people who are really responsible Who holger can bug until they respond and if they don't respond he can get you Yeah Okay, and a couple of points number one on the fundraising thing is Um, I'm not aware that we have a debian fundraising team at all So the thing that has been the biggest motivation I mean I've been involved in debcon fundraising now Far longer than I ever wanted to be Um, you know two years after I said guys. I'm not interested. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm still doing at least some of it Um, and of course that's that's the normal thing in debian. You get guilt tripped into doing stuff You don't really want to do anymore Um But of course so far we have just been fundraising for the conference. We have a target. We have a deadline It's something that actually means that even though you don't have the time even though You know, you're not sure there's the right thing to do. You're phoning people. You're pestering them. You're pestering You're pestering and really there's lots of pestering um That's point one the second point I was going to come on to is for a delegation. Who do you delegate to? Hands up anyone here who would voluntarily take a delegation to be to be debcon Well, there are outstanding delegations. So we need to decide what to do with that The outstanding delegation, of course is is quite woolly and that's actually possibly one of the strengths of it Um Debcon possibly even more so than debian as a whole has a problem in that we end up with severe burnout. I mean Holger burns out every year, but it's still here because I guess he must enjoy it actually Exactly and the best we can do is you know come up hug him every year feeding beer applaud him and and you know And comfort him when he does have have the occasional outburst because people have been annoying him. It happens and dude, we love you um The fun thing of course, thanks, but I don't want this. Yeah And I think And I think And I think there are things which can really be improved to make this less likely and sure and for me That's far more important than necessarily worrying about Details of a delegation of a delegation to a to a set of people We we struggle already to get enough people to run things We always end up with people from previous previous local teams end up just dragged in because well Hey, you've done this before you must be good at it and oh go on. Well, nobody else is doing it So it still needs doing and I said it's the guilt trip thing almost We have been talking about the delegation for the part of controlling the budget In another side, we have been talking about the delegation for knowing who is the release the releasing For who is the death counting? but I also want to add that the delegation will be very important for Some important decision like when it's going to be in the DEF CON organized because I had a very very I had a very bad memory of the Notice last year meeting because I decided not to attend for my own sake But from the previous two meetings from previous years I had very bad memories And it was one of the points where I was really really missing not having some kind of delegation on somebody who was on charge Because it was starting a very very stressful meeting Okay, who is going to chair and the person chairing really have a lot of responsibility and was able to Kind of Interfer out in decision I don't I don't think that micro delegations are a good thing for DEF CON So delegate two people run the video team to delegate two people run the budget or whatever just have one global delegation I don't want to do the tones of micro delegation if if you understand that I even want to suggest that and The other thing Yes, also the I think that for example the decision about the the place should Should be taken by more than the delegates that the delegates should announce a team and then the decision should be taken So as I've been listening to this conversation here, I was thinking through and realizing that perhaps Although originally I was thinking more long lines of what bits do you delegate now? It's actually making more sense to me that For most of it what you'd really want is not a delegation at all Because you're not delegating a particular thing If if the DPL is you know If they come to to if the DEF CON team comes to the DPL and says this is how money we want the DPL says yes or no And then also that they present a budget to the DPL for approval And that gives us all the oversight and then how you get there is a separate matter Um, but then yes, what what you really want is if you're going to delegate anything You you want to be delegating leadership and and the reporting structure and not worry about the finer details Because most of that is not stuff that From Debian's perspective that they care about that you even it's not the sort of thing that Debian normally even does by delegation So if we're just putting putting a leadership structure in place for the team if if the team As a whole thinks that's useful then I think That's worthwhile. So let me just check whether I understood your vision correctly So let's say that we only have Debian money And Debian money needed to start the Debian organization are asked for from Debian money to the DPL and All kind of financial stuff is Explicitly approved or not by the DPL and everything else is not delegated and handled independently by the DEB CON team Is that correct? But with a leadership delegation for the team Ah, okay with with a leadership delegation for the team, okay And this is kind of the last In comments, maybe not a leadership delegation, but what about official Debian representation on the global DEB CON team? Like we are not separated I think the point with Steve Mosvecki was that we do not need that if we have explicit budget approval and a leadership delegation Uh The teams involved get a lot of pressure running up to DEB CON and sometimes fractures appear and You've got to be really careful if you're going to delegate anything at all That you don't delegate to one or the other side of that fracture because that'll turn it into a rift valley Suck had a good idea not to not only to delegate to existing DEB CON team members, but also to people who Communicate things and make things work and we're not involved in running DEB CON so far Yeah, we're really out of time. So we need to to close this. I'm sorry I kind of suck that managing the discussion here So I think the only point we can make here is that we kind of acknowledge that this gray situation is is not something Particularly good and helpful in the relationship between An entity which we don't even know if it exists or not and Debian So the I think the only way forward is actually to after DEB CON take a couple of weeks off And then discuss early on like in september or whatever It's a couple of weeks because those weeks are sometimes like 50 Yeah, no, that's too much But the the goal here is restarting this discussion DEB CON team I've tried out not to be on that list those far, but okay, I will join the list But I think we should really have a decision of this important Keypoint like before december or something like that so that we can more quietly move next year to that Okay, so in october we need yeah, we need at around the At the end of the year we need to decide where DEB CON 12 will be Okay, so that's a very good point So whether to to have this discussion not on DEB CON team, but on Debian project I'm not sure you need first at least make pointers on both lists I think we should wait for you could say that DEB CON just please. I think we need first to formalize the Existing positions on DEB CON team and then enlarge the discussion Otherwise we're not going to be because if you start on that Debian project of people which have no idea What we're talking about, but for sure they would like to comment on that So thank you all for attending and thanks to the DEB CON team They've been doing an amazing job No matter all this nitpicking we have been doing the work this year have been amazing. So thank you for this conference