Re: [gentoo-project] Looking for ways the Foundation can accomplish its mission.

[Richard Yao <ryao@gentoo.org>]

> On Sep 7, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 4:47 PM Thomas Deutschmann <whissi@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>> ...but asking for ideas how we can spend money and things like that when
>> there's still a risk that we will lose non-profit status or lose our
>> current assets if IRS loses patience when we will miss next deadline
>> doesn't sound like the right order of priorities.
>> 
> 
> ++
> 
> The Gentoo Foundation is boring.  This isn't a problem that needs to
> be solved.  We're pretty efficient money-wise, which means that
> despite almost no effort going into fundraising and our legal
> obligations, we're still able to pay our bills and stay under the
> radar of regulators who could shut us down at any time.
> 
> When you only need a few thousand dollars a year to keep a global
> organization operating that is a GOOD thing.  Let's focus on making
> that stronger.  If our legal obligations are all caught up and we have
> 5 years of operating funds in the bank, maybe then we can start
> thinking about spending more money.
Frugality is a good thing. I strongly support the idea of ensuring that the foundation maintain a surplus of funds to last 5 years. However, I also support this discussion of whether the foundation should be spending money on more things than it has in the past. As far as I know, this has never been given proper attention. I think we should consider the opportunity cost of inaction and weight it against the cost of doing something.

I think that the foundation should have multiple thresholds at which any recurring expenditures that are created as a result of this discussion are restricted to exercise fiscal restraint. All unnecessary expenses should be suspended if the treasury drops below the projected operating expenses for the next 5 years at any point. “Luxuries” like a conference should be suspended at the 10 year threshold.

Fiscal restraint is important for the sake of ensuring that the foundation is never in a financial pinch caused by mismanagement. It also is to ensure that the foundation does not do anything to violate the trust placed in it by those making donations. It is very important that the foundation not do anything that makes donors feel that their donations were wasted.

Any spending that the foundation does will make Gentoo better off than had we not spent it and it should be kept within the foundation’s means to avoid a risk of running out of money. The value of getting people together face to face every few years to get the benefits cited by the mainline kernel is hard to quantify, but my feeling is that it is worthwhile if costs to the foundation are kept under $2000 and that it does risk not depleting funding below 10 years of operating expenses.

I should add that my support of the conference idea is because the mainline Linux kernel finds putting developers together face to face helps developer productivity. This is not so valuable that the foundation should spend some outrageous sum doing it. If the foundation does host a conference, perhaps it could raise money through tickets. For example, the OpenZFS developer summit was originally free, but it switched to charging $50 per non-speaker attending to cover the costs. There is also the example of the kernel engineering summit and LinuxCon being collocates, such that we could have a separate event for developers that is funded by the main conference.

Anyway, I think the merits of each idea should be weighed. I consider the long term fiscal viability of the foundation to be priority #1 in financial planning. I realized that my previous email did not make that clear. I had assumed that it was a given, but upon reflection, it really ought to be stated.
> 
> If anything needs a bounty, it is an accountant...
This is a good point. I think this should be prioritized over other ideas.
> 
> -- 
> Rich
>