2013 budget draft - TDF Budget as of 2013-01-14

Board Discuss
#1

Hello,

between Christmas and New Year, I have been working on the budget for 2013. The good news is that since our fundraising campaign in October, we have received approximately 60.000 ¤ (!) in donations, which is just amazing, and the average donation rate per month shifted from 2.500 ¤ to about 10.000-15.000 ¤. Congratulations to everyone involved, you all can be very proud of that!

A few comments to this very first draft of the budget, that we would like to refine together with you.

- All counters are reset to zero, which is why at a first glance, the available money looks less than last year. In the December budget, only one monthly rate for our infrastructure was left, while for 2013, full 12 months are planned in.

- The item of domain names was previously left uncounted, but I calculated our annual fees yesterday, and added that value.

- This budget only plans in the TDF Berlin account money, not the donations SPI collected for the LibreOffice project. The most recent SPI treasurer's report I could find is linked in the header of the budget.

- Travel fundings usually occur via SPI, not via the TDF Berlin account, which is why we did not plan them in as fixed item in this budget.

- The safety reserve is based on my gut feeling. It might make sense to top that up to 20.000 ¤ to be prepared for unexpected spendings, but for the moment, I'd like to leave it at 15.000 ¤.

- This budget does not yet foresee any reserves for 2014, which we should collect already early on, since nobody knows how the donation flow will continue.

- The budget can always only factor in the amount we definitely do have. For planning of long-term projects, it might make sense to have a "prospective budget" soon, to know what - given the donation flow stays as it currently is - we have available in e.g. June. However, keep in mind that budgets can never ever be on prospective amounts, but must fit to what we definitely have available for spending.

- The values outside the yellow frame are planned in and/or booked already, and the budget requests we have received so far are in the yellow, framed box. The latter are the items we need to plan and discuss about.

To give a better overview, I have uploaded the current budget draft to our wiki at

  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Tdfbudget2013.pdf

Any feedback welcome, and thanks a lot to everyone for their contributions!

Florian

#2

Hi Florian,

A question about the funding requests. Could we have information as to what was requested?

pt-BR project (Olivier)
QA netbooks (Björn)
Marketing (Charles) -- I think this one is for the FB ads?

Cheers,

Marc

#3

Hi,

A question about the funding requests. Could we have information as to
what was requested?

pt-BR project (Olivier)
QA netbooks (Björn)
Marketing (Charles) -- I think this one is for the FB ads?

I'm Cc'ing those three. We have been working internally on the budget first, to have some starting point, and those three requests came in. These requests have not been decided on yet (on purpose, so the board has no advantage over the public lists), we want to discuss this here in public, so Olivier, Björn and Charles should elaborate on the plans. :wink:

Mea culpa, I wanted to ping them individually when the budget is public, so they can comment, but I didn't manage yet - sorry!

Florian

#4

The QA netbooks have already been discussed on QA Call. The idea is to have a
budget for a set of netbooks that we can give publically as prizes to our most
active QA contributors in QA marathons and triage contests.

The idea is that this will:
- motivate our current volunteers
- growth our triager community
- allow triagers who have been using one platform only to have a dedicated
  system for dual-boot Windows and Linux without any interruption of their
  daily work
- same for versions

As netbooks for testing and triaging are available now for 200-300EUR this IMHO
something well worth it. There are still some tricky details to work out
and discuss like:
- how to get them to the volunteers without too much extra cost
  (shipping/handing them over at HackFests)
- how to set the rules on 'winning' one of these without making it too complex
  or to easy to game the system

Proposals on how to fix this for the next bug triage contest/QA marathon are
most appreciated of course!

Best,

Bjoern

#5

Hello,

Hi,

A question about the funding requests. Could we have information as to
what was requested?

pt-BR project (Olivier)
QA netbooks (Björn)
Marketing (Charles) -- I think this one is for the FB ads?

I'm Cc'ing those three. We have been working internally on the budget
first, to have some starting point, and those three requests came in.
These requests have not been decided on yet (on purpose, so the board
has no advantage over the public lists), we want to discuss this here in
public, so Olivier, Björn and Charles should elaborate on the plans. :wink:

Mea culpa, I wanted to ping them individually when the budget is public,
so they can comment, but I didn't manage yet - sorry!

Florian

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Brazil-Budget2013.pdf

We submitted the budget plan to avoid last-minute/emergency decision to
get from the BoD. Our plan involves participation on 3 major events
(FISL, CAMPUS-PARTY and LATINOWARE) as well as organizing 3 hack-fests
in 3 different cities of Brazil (TBD). Different from Europe, distances
in Brazil must to be crossed by air and we have to move one or two
people to mentor the fests.

Kind regards
- --
Olivier Hallot
Founder, Board of Directors Member - The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Fundação responsável civilmente, de acordo com o direito civil
Detalhes Legais: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
LibreOffice translation leader for Brazilian Portuguese
+55-21-8822-8812

#6

Hi Björn, all,

QA netbooks (Björn)

I'm Cc'ing those three. We have been working internally on the
budget first, to have some starting point, and those three requests
came in. These requests have not been decided on yet (on purpose, so
the board has no advantage over the public lists), we want to
discuss this here in public, so Olivier, Björn and Charles should
elaborate on the plans. :wink:

The QA netbooks have already been discussed on QA Call. The idea is to have a
budget for a set of netbooks that we can give publically as prizes to our most
active QA contributors in QA marathons and triage contests.

I like the idea of making a contest, but I dislike to limit it on QA. What about l10n, documentation, marketing, design and others? Let's do and budget a volunteer contest or even one (or more) prize(s) will be drawn by all contributors. Maybe we can find sponsors for some more prizes.

#7

Thanks Bjoern,

Re: Shipping, A suggestion could be to -- we should be able to buy and deliver using our TDF members' help. For example, if awarding to anyone in my geographic location (Waterloo-Toronto Canada), I could make either a trip out to deliver and award OR make arrangements for purchase and deliver locally. The member in this instance could represent the TDF for the award.

Great idea for the QA and enticement to join.

Cheers,

Marc

#8

Hi KJ

I like the idea of making a contest, but I dislike to limit it on QA.
What about l10n, documentation, marketing, design and others? Let's do
and budget a volunteer contest or even one (or more) prize(s) will be
drawn by all contributors. Maybe we can find sponsors for some more prizes.

FYI, there was a note sent to all of these groups for budgetary requests. You can find these notes on all of their lists. Most of them submitted no requests. The groups were pinged a total of 3 times. The most recent requests may be found on our wiki.[1]

You can find the posts on each of the lists by searching on the term "funding".

Cheers,

Marc

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Funding_Priorities

#9

Hi KJ

I like the idea of making a contest, but I dislike to limit it on QA.
What about l10n, documentation, marketing, design and others? Let's do
and budget a volunteer contest or even one (or more) prize(s) will be
drawn by all contributors. Maybe we can find sponsors for some more
prizes.

FYI, there was a note sent to all of these groups for budgetary
requests. You can find these notes on all of their lists. Most of them
submitted no requests. The groups were pinged a total of 3 times. The
most recent requests may be found on our wiki.[1]

You can find the posts on each of the lists by searching on the term
"funding".

I know the requests. It is ok for me when Björn as QA requests the budget for QA.
My opinion isn't about the QA budget but about the contest and about community.
I think it isn't a good signal to do a contest with prizes for a part of the community only. If we do a contest for QA we should also do a contest for other parts of community, either in one or in different contests.

Our big point is the community and as I remember one of our first items for marketing for the next time. This should lead us not to priorize a part of community.

> [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Funding_Priorities

And there you find no hint about a contest for QA. And so my only intention was to complete Björn's idea for the whole community.

Just my 2€cts.

#10

Hi all,

Hi KJ

I like the idea of making a contest, but I dislike to limit it on QA.
What about l10n, documentation, marketing, design and others? Let's do
and budget a volunteer contest or even one (or more) prize(s) will be
drawn by all contributors. Maybe we can find sponsors for some more
prizes.

FYI, there was a note sent to all of these groups for budgetary
requests. You can find these notes on all of their lists. Most of them
submitted no requests. The groups were pinged a total of 3 times. The
most recent requests may be found on our wiki.[1]

You can find the posts on each of the lists by searching on the term
"funding".

I know the requests. It is ok for me when Björn as QA requests the
budget for QA.
My opinion isn't about the QA budget but about the contest and about
community.
I think it isn't a good signal to do a contest with prizes for a part of
the community only. If we do a contest for QA we should also do a
contest for other parts of community, either in one or in different
contests.

Our big point is the community and as I remember one of our first items
for marketing for the next time. This should lead us not to priorize a
part of community.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Funding_Priorities

And there you find no hint about a contest for QA. And so my only
intention was to complete Björn's idea for the whole community.

I agree with you. The issue is that several projects are not structured
like the QA one, or for the NL projects, are disseminated over several
tasks that are not specifics to one subproject and so they don't see how
to answer/handle such a request for funds.
You idea, or Björn one, is very good, but need some organization before
being submitted to the rest of the community. Mostly it's a matter of
close communication with the projects.

Kind regards
Sophie

#11

klaus-jürgen weghorn ol wrote (16-01-13 18:09)

[...]
I think it isn't a good signal to do a contest with prizes for a part of
the community only. If we do a contest for QA we should also do a
contest for other parts of community, either in one or in different
contests.

Yes of course.
I think that every part of the community that comes up with a well funded idea, will find a warm welcome.
Now Bjoern worked on a plan for the QA group. He sees the need to foster and stimulate that work from nearby, so probably got inspired :wink:

#12

Hi,

The QA netbooks have already been discussed on QA Call. The idea is to have a
budget for a set of netbooks that we can give publically as prizes to our most
active QA contributors in QA marathons and triage contests.

A few addition given the discussion:
We will likely lend the netbooks to a set of QA volunteers. And those machines
are not intended to let our QA volunteers play Starcraft, but to be able to
triage -- possibly on multiple platforms -- without busting their usual work
machine.

Why only QA? Because QA did organize quite a few events (Bug Hunting Sessions,
QA Marathons, QA Wochenende) making me confident they have the manpower to
organize this. I did hard work to support Rainer, Joel, Florian and other to
get QA rolling over the last year. Once other parts of the project get there,
the same applies to them -- I am confident at that point they will file their
own budget requests.

Note also this is an opportunity that presented itself: E.g. for developers we
cant easily do this as a developer machine for LibreOffice is quite a bit more
expensive.

Best,

Bjoern

#13

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 6:38 AM, Bjoern Michaelsen <bjoern.michaelsen@canonical.com> wrote:

#14

Just wanted to correct myself, I didn’t mean to say “blamed”, what I meant to say is “we should encourage groups to be equally proactive. Instead of thinking that QA will be seen as favorites or some other such thing, we should make it clear that we support our community always and we always support those who develop clear and well thought out strategies”

That’s all, thanks again all.

Best Regards,
Joel

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