Understanding Debian's financial situation is essential for the DPL, as
one of the DPL's responsibilities is making decisions on funding
requests. However, it is important to emphasize that the actual
financial management-including tracking income, expenses, and
reporting-is handled by the treasurers. Their work ensures that Debian's finances are well managed and accounted for, and the DPL relies on their expertise to make informed decisions.
◃
For a long time, financial decision-making was relatively
straightforward. In his Bits from the DPL talk, Neil once mentioned at DebConf15 that he approved every single funding request he received, and Debian's financial reserves still grew during his term. Unfortunately,
these simpler times seem to be over, and the need for careful financial planning has increased. I'd love to be in Neil's shoes, and I hope that future DPLs will see those times return.
Hi,
Quoting Andreas' reply in an earlier thread:
On 18/03/25 at 16:14 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
Understanding Debian's financial situation is essential for the DPL, as
one of the DPL's responsibilities is making decisions on funding
requests. However, it is important to emphasize that the actual
financial management-including tracking income, expenses, and
reporting-is handled by the treasurers. Their work ensures that Debian's
finances are well managed and accounted for, and the DPL relies on their
expertise to make informed decisions.
◃
For a long time, financial decision-making was relatively
straightforward. In his Bits from the DPL talk, Neil once mentioned at
DebConf15 that he approved every single funding request he received, and
Debian's financial reserves still grew during his term. Unfortunately,
these simpler times seem to be over, and the need for careful financial
planning has increased. I'd love to be in Neil's shoes, and I hope that
future DPLs will see those times return.
Do you see this as a problem? What solutions do you envision, and what
will be your strategy as DPL when dealing with finances? For example, identify where costs can be reduced? Instead, increase revenue (how?)?
Both?
Also, why do you think we aren't anymore in the comfortable situation we
were in ten years ago?
Hi,
Quoting Andreas' reply in an earlier thread:
On 18/03/25 at 16:14 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
Understanding Debian's financial situation is essential for the DPL, as
one of the DPL's responsibilities is making decisions on funding
requests. However, it is important to emphasize that the actual
financial management-including tracking income, expenses, and
reporting-is handled by the treasurers. Their work ensures that Debian's finances are well managed and accounted for, and the DPL relies on their expertise to make informed decisions.
◃
For a long time, financial decision-making was relatively
straightforward. In his Bits from the DPL talk, Neil once mentioned at DebConf15 that he approved every single funding request he received, and Debian's financial reserves still grew during his term. Unfortunately, these simpler times seem to be over, and the need for careful financial planning has increased. I'd love to be in Neil's shoes, and I hope that future DPLs will see those times return.
Do you see this as a problem? What solutions do you envision, and what
will be your strategy as DPL when dealing with finances? For example, identify where costs can be reduced? Instead, increase revenue (how?)?
Both?
Also, why do you think we aren't anymore in the comfortable situation we
were in ten years ago?
This is a public list, and as a TO administrator, I have part of the
answers, but it's not my place to disclose the full situation publicly.
I'd say that essentially our funds ~halved since 2019/2020. While we are
not close to be broke, this could go fast if we are not vigilant.
We didn't receive enough sponsorship for the recent Debian events (both DebConf23 and 24 made a significant dent in our funds), and we needed to
buy hardware (the time where some companies gave it to us seems far
away).
The main issue, sponsors, might be something that can be solved easily,
if potential sponsors realize that their help is still needed.
For a long time, financial decision-making was relatively
straightforward. In his Bits from the DPL talk, Neil once mentioned at DebConf15 that he approved every single funding request he received, and Debian's financial reserves still grew during his term. Unfortunately, these simpler times seem to be over, and the need for careful financial planning has increased. I'd love to be in Neil's shoes, and I hope that future DPLs will see those times return.
Do you see this as a problem?
What solutions do you envision, and what
will be your strategy as DPL when dealing with finances?
For example,
identify where costs can be reduced?
Instead, increase revenue (how?)?
Both?
Also, why do you think we aren't anymore in the comfortable situation we
were in ten years ago?
I remember hearing a pointer from a few folks that one of the reasons for higher cost of debconf 23 and 24 was it due to being in Asia while most of the DDs live in Europe.
As a result, the travel costs bumped up the overall conference expense.
This year DC is happening in France, but based on the IRC discussions
it still seems that the budget is a bit tight - so what would be an ideal geographic location just in terms of costs involved?
Also, was there a reduction in sponsorship costs in DC23,24 as compared to the Debconfs before 2022? Is there a reason?
We didn't receive enough sponsorship for the recent Debian events (both DebConf23 and 24 made a significant dent in our funds), and we needed to
buy hardware (the time where some companies gave it to us seems far
away).
The main issue, sponsors, might be something that can be solved easily,
if potential sponsors realize that their help is still needed.
Hi,
On 04/04/25 at 19:48 +0200, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:
We didn't receive enough sponsorship for the recent Debian events (both
DebConf23 and 24 made a significant dent in our funds), and we needed to
buy hardware (the time where some companies gave it to us seems far
away).
The main issue, sponsors, might be something that can be solved easily,
if potential sponsors realize that their help is still needed.
I've been wondering for a long time if our fundraising strategy is
optimal.
We are mainly fundraising in the context of DebConf. It is useful when fundraising to be explicit about a specific goal (organizing a
conference), but it also means that the convincing work needs to be done every year.
Maybe we should also have a plan to raise funds directly for Debian (not specifically for DebConf). It might provide a path to convince
organizations to allocate a yearly budget to Debian, and turn an opt-in scheme (per-DebConf sponsoring) to an opt-out scheme (annual Debian contribution, that continues by default every year). In large
organizations, it might be easier to do the convincing work once and
then get that sponsorship written in recurring yearly expenses.
Benefits of sponsoring Debian could include "be mentioned as a Debian
sponsor at official Debian events, next to event-specific sponsors".
An important challenge with such a setup would be to build a team
responsible for organizing that fundraising. It looks like, currently,
we push that responsibility to the DebConf team (with the
motivation/hammer that if they don't do well at fundraising, it directly limits their ability to organize a nice DebConf).
Hi,
This is not related to the election, but I would like to propose to the next DPL we organize a "call for donations".
First, we need to organize a "call for people interesting to organize a call for donations" to gather volunteers to discuss ideas for the campaign.
Le Sun, Apr 06, 2025 at 11:08:35AM -0300, Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana a écrit :
Hi,
This is not related to the election, but I would like to propose to the next >> DPL we organize a "call for donations".
First, we need to organize a "call for people interesting to organize a call >> for donations" to gather volunteers to discuss ideas for the campaign.
Debian not asking users for money, and more generally, Debian operating
with very little cash flow is a major reason I contribute to it.
If Debconf is not sustainable with our current level of funding then we should spend less money on Debconf and Debconf could look other source
of funding.
Actively asking 'regular people' (as mentionned in your subsequent email) to donate is crossing a line that should not be crossed. Debconf is not
worth it.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 715 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 27:11:02 |
| Calls: | 12,106 |
| Calls today: | 6 |
| Files: | 15,006 |
| Messages: | 6,518,203 |