{"thread":{"id":"47995","subject":"Git / Software Freedom Conservancy status report (2018)","startedAt":"2018-03-06T23:16:20Z","lastAt":"2018-03-06T23:16:20Z","messageCount":1,"participants":["Jeff King"],"isPatch":false,"patchVersion":null,"patchTotal":null},"messages":[{"id":"341174","messageId":"20180306231609.GA1632@sigill.intra.peff.net","threadId":"47995","inReplyTo":null,"subject":"Git / Software Freedom Conservancy status report (2018)","fromName":"Jeff King","fromEmail":"peff@peff.net","sentAt":"2018-03-06T23:16:11Z","receivedAt":"2018-03-06T23:16:20Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"peff@peff.net","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/45925?v=4"},"body":"It's been about a year since I sent a big update regarding our\nactivities with Conservancy. So I'm going to pretend that it was all a\nplan to have an annual report, and this is the 2018 one. The previous\nreport can be found at:\n\n  https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202024501.57hrw4657tsqerqq@sigill.intra.peff.net/\n\n\n# Background\n\nMost people who work on the project know this already, but here's a\nlittle background.\n\nGit is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. We joined\nin 2010 so that Conservancy could help us manage our money and other\nassets, and represent us for legal stuff like trademarks. Conservancy\ndoesn't hold any copyright on Git code, and our status as a member\nproject is totally disconnected from the development of the code. The\ntechnical direction of the project is delegated back to Git.\n\nA \"Project Leadership Committee\" (PLC) represents Git in Conservancy.\nThe PLC currently consists of Junio Hamano and me.\n\n\n# Financials\n\nWe have ~26k USD in our account. That's up ~5k from last year. Here are\nthe ledger numbers from the last year (it's double-entry, so negative is\ngood):\n\n            $-6,632.97  Income:Git\n            $-5,368.20    Donations\n            $-1,174.86    Royalties\n               $-89.91    Currency Conversion\n             $1,117.79  Expenses:Git\n                $58.69    Currency Conversion\n               $176.98    Banking Fees\n               $882.12    Conferences:Travel\n               $225.00      Per Diem\n  --------------------\n            $-5,515.18\n\nMost of our money is taken in from donations. About 20% of it comes from\n\"royalties\". Most of that is from the Amazon affiliate links on\ngit-scm.com (we link to the Pro Git book, but if people click through\nand buy other stuff, that counts too). A little bit of the money comes\nfrom Packt Publishing, who sends the project royalties based on sales of\ntheir Git-related books. We give 10% of incoming money to Conservancy's\ngeneral fund (these numbers are after the 10%).\n\nOur main expense was travel money for last year's Contributor Summit. It\nlooks like we spend a lot on banking fees and currency conversion, but\nreally those are just necessary parts of taking in the donations (e.g.,\nsomebody donates through paypal who charges a small cut to process the\ntransaction).\n\nWe'll probably spend about the same amount this year for travel to Git\nMerge (more on that below).\n\n\n# Trademark\n\nAs I reported last year, we hold a trademark on the term \"Git\" in the\nspace of software and version control. I won't repeat all the details;\nsee last year's report.\n\nThere were a few requests this year from various entities; we mostly\nfollowed the rules of thumb I laid out last year.\n\nSubjectively, it felt like there were fewer requests this year than in\nthe past. I suspect last year's discussion may have gotten our trademark\npolicy a bit more attention (most of the previous requests are of the\nform \"I've been using the name \"Git Foo\" for my project and just found\nout you don't want me to do so).\n\n\n# Travel Budget Allocation\n\nAs with past years, we offered money for community members to come to\nGit Merge (and the contributor summit). We've always sort of made up the\nprocedure each year, but this year tried to formalize it a little more.\nOur procedure was basically:\n\n  0. We picked an amount that seemed OK to spend. For this year we\n     picked $2,000 (which admittedly is kind of made up).\n\n  1. I put out a call for requests to the mailing list.\n\n  2. For each request, I asked the requester to ballpark the cost of the\n     flight plus lodging to cover the conference.\n\n  3. We ordered the requests roughly by contribution history. We also\n     treated people in programs like GSoC and Outreachy as frequent\n     contributors. Even though they haven't contributed as much code\n     yet, the point of the program is getting them involved.\n\n  4. We walked down the list until we ran out of budget. At any given\n     level, the amount of money offered was tweaked manually based on\n     need/fairness (i.e., to offer more to people whose flights are more\n     expensive).\n\n     This meant that we extended an offer of partial funds in some\n     cases (at the end of the line).\n\nThat whole procedure is totally open to comment and suggestions. There's\na huge amount of hand-waving and subjectivity there. It also doesn't\nreally work as a general procedure if somebody were to request one-off\nfunding for a conference besides Git Merge (which has never actually\nhappened so far).\n\n\n# Project Governance\n\nAs many of you know, the third member of the PLC, Shawn Pearce, passed\naway early this year. Our charter calls for a minimum of three PLC\nmembers. New members are decided by a simple majority vote of the\nexisting committee (of which there are now 2 members, but Conservancy\nhas a tie-breaking vote if for some reason we deadlock).\n\nBeyond that, there's no specified procedure. Junio and I have some\nthoughts on candidates, but we want to open it up to the list for\ndiscussion and possible nominations.\n\n\n# Conclusion\n\nThat's it for this year. I'm happy to answer any questions on the list,\nand I'll propose a session at tomorrow's Contributor Summit in case\nanybody wants to discuss it in person.\n\n-Peff\n"}]}