On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 1:03 PM, inode0 <
inode0@gmail.com> wrote:
> Fellow ambassadors,
>
> As one of a large group of ambassadors and non-ambassadors who is
> committed to empowering Fedora contributors to achieve their goals and
> who has been working to make budget available to them to help them in
> their endeavors I think it is time to rethink how we are trying to
> accomplish this.
>
> During the time I've been involved what might be thought of as
> discretionary Fedora budget has been the province of the Red Hat
> Community Architecture team and FAmSCo as portions of those funds have
> been delegated in the past. There has been a consistent and I think
> very positive direction of pushing budget decisions closer and closer
> to those who need the funds throughout my years with the project.
> There are still issues involving paying for things (who can, what is
> needed, getting reimbursed, etc.) and those issues are being worked on
> currently. I want to be clear those aren't the issues I am now
> concerned about.
>
> After much discussion with new and old friends from around the world
> at FUDCon Tempe I've concluded that FAmSCo probably isn't going to be
> the best place for non-ambassador budget decisions to happen as we
> expand our efforts at increasing funding of various new events (FADs
> with explicit work product to be achieved for example) as well as
> non-event funding of efforts as they might arise.
>
> While FAmSCo has done a superb job with budget issues and I expect
> will continue to do so, as more budget decisions move from the Red Hat
> Community Architecture team into the Fedora Project proper, to many
> people it just feels wrong for it to flow through an ambassador group
> to the rest of the community. As an example, for a packager who isn't
> engaged with the ambassador community but who wants to organize a FAD
> asking FAmSCo makes no more sense than asking the Documentation team
> or QA. Some people are quite offended by this and while I don't think
> they should be the reality is that they are, it just doesn't feel
> right to them.
>
> There was a subtle suggestion at FADNA last year that we consider a
> new organization. I was resistant to this, I thought FAmSCo has stuff
> in place and has experience dealing with budgets, etc. Now after
> talking to more people, especially non-ambassadors, I think I was
> wrong to be resistant. Now I think that if we can modify our structure
> a bit to encourage more engagement from more contributors and have
> those contributors be comfortable asking for funds we should do it.
> There are lots of ways this could be done, I'm going to suggest one
> possibility here.
>
> We could create a budget or finance specific group but I think we
> might want to consider one with a broader community mission. I'm
> tempted to suggest a Fedora Community Architecture group, but I'm not
> sure that really captures what I want. I don't want another elected
> body and would like to see this group grow in a way similar to the
> packaging committee (if my understanding of that one is correct).
> Perhaps the Red Hat Community Architecture team (who will necessarily
> be working with whoever is making budget decisions) could seed the
> team with one or two people from wherever in the project. Those folks
> could expand the team to include representatives from various areas
> within the project. They or a subgroup they designate can be tasked
> with helping solve funding issues for the Fedora community at large (I
> think of this as non-ambassador event/swag/media sorts of things).
>
> The benefits I see of doing this are that it helps the Red Hat
> Community Architecture folks continue to move more funding decisions
> into the Fedora Project proper. It gives contributors a place to go to
> get funding for their events or other needs that isn't tied to a
> specific group within the project, having a neutral nature by its
> composition. If and when we get to the point that hard decisions need
> to be made about whether to fund FAD X or FAD Y, I hope this body as
> constructed will have diverse enough understanding of the issues
> related to the work proposed to make informed decisions for the
> benefit of us all.
>
> Projects grow, sometimes that natural growth leads to problems no one
> intended. It just happens. I think this is an opportunity to fix one
> problem by taking a small step back and empowering others.
>
> Flame away :)
>
> John
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