Why we DO need a legal entity, why it must have "Fedora" in it's name and why it must be granted the trademark

[Igor Pires Soares]

Em Sáb, 2011-05-21 às 01:06 +0200, Christoph Wickert escreveu:
> (Sorry for the longish subject, I hope I have your attention now.)
> 
> LinuxTag is over. I had to catch up a lot because I missed 4 days of
> work and I didn't find the time to blog about it. Nevertheless I want to
> share what I have learned as the primary event owner.
> 
> 1. We need credit cards
> 
> We need credit cards or a reliable way to get money. I know of people
> who are waiting for money for months and depending on the amount it can
> be really bad. I paid for nearly all LinuxTag expenses, more than 2500
> EUR. In addition to that I booked the hotel for Zoltan in Vienna,
> another 310 EUR. On the other hand Max prepaid me 1000 EUR. Still this
> means I had to prepay more than 1800 EUR.
> 
> Reimbursing people does not work when we are talking about these kind of
> sums. Purchase orders don't work either, they take way to long and are
> to unreliable, at least here in Germany. Thus we need credit cards.

About that point specifically, I remember Max saying on FUDCon Tempe
that Fedora would provide community credit cards for key contributors in
specific regions. We are still waiting for this, since it will help us
to improve things.

Reimbursement is really not feasible when working with big amounts. Even
if we think of small amounts it won't work well in some regions where
income distribution is a social problem, like in Africa for instance.

In addition, folks from Community Architecture and the FPL are usually
very busy and don't have available time to deal with all purchases
needed for major events around the world. For instance, airfare for
FUDCon Panama was bought just a few weeks away from the event. That is
far from ideal. Airfare for FUDCon Tempe was bought months ahead, what
gave organizers and attendees enough time to deal with traveling
paperwork and coordinate with their employers.

I'm not saying that credit cards are the best way to solve this issue,
maybe there are other ways. Anyway, I see that those issues are faced by
our community in different parts of the world, therefore they must be
addressed.

Regards,
-- 
Igor Pires Soares
Fedora Ambassador (Brazil) - Member of FAmSCo
Fedora I18N/L10N QA
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Igor