[Ambassadors] EMEA Membership Questions

[Max Spevack]

On Thu, 15 May 2008, Christoph Wickert wrote:

> So my original question is legitimate: What happens if EMEA e. V. 
> disagrees with FAmSCo or FeSCo? Indeed, it's a hypothetical question. 
> I'm not saying that it necessarily will happen, but in a big community 
> of people it is very likely to happen sooner or later and we need to 
> be prepared for the worst case.

I speak only for myself:

Fedora EMEA e.V. can do whatever it wants.  It is a *coincidence* that 
many of Fedora EMEA e.V.'s members are also Fedora contributors, 
volunteers, developers, and ambassadors.

Fedora EMEA e.V. is granted the right to use the "Fedora" name by the 
Fedora Board, and that right is granted as long as the Fedora Board 
believes that the work Fedora EMEA e.V. is doing supports the larger 
work that the Fedora Project is doing.

One of the most useful properties of Fedora EMEA e.V. is that it will 
allow the Fedora and Community budget that Red Hat allocates for EMEA 
(not just Europe, but for all of EMEA) to be more easily managed and 
spent.

Right now, paying for an event like LinuxTag is a difficult task, that 
has taken up a lot of my time and energy behind the scenes.  The actual 
organizational work has been done by the LinuxTag organizational team, 
but in the end it is my responsibility to make sure the bills get paid. 
Having a legal entity (Fedora EMEA e.V.) in the future will make this 
easier.

Again, I urge everyone to think of Fedora EMEA e.V. as a useful tool and 
legal entity that can *support* the Fedora Project, and *not* as a 
replacement for anything that the Fedora Ambassadors group is doing.

==========

On the subject of LinuxTag directly, I will say this:

We are spending close to $20k USD on LinuxTag this year, which is more 
than double what we spent on the event last year.

There will be over 20 Fedora Ambasadors from all over Europe at the 
event, which makes it the largest non-FUDCon event that we have ever 
had, anywhere in the world.  It is also a 4 day event in a large, 
expensive city.  The *vast majority* of the costs of LinuxTag go to 
helping to make sure that all the Fedora Ambassadors and contributors 
who attend the event do not have to suffer financial hardship in order 
to do so.  Those Ambassadors are already giving 4 days of their time, 
and almost all of them are going into their own pockets for travel costs 
and for Fedora polo shirts.  The Fedora Project is helping to make sure 
that the hotel bills are paid.

But our money is not infinite, and while it pains me to not be able to 
fully fund everyone's trip to LinuxTag, at some point we had to draw the 
line.  There is only *one person* coming to LinuxTag from outside of 
Europe, and that is Paul Frields.

The Fedora Project spends the *vast majority* of its funds directly on 
community members, helping to fund travel, lodging, etc.  This will 
continue to be the case, but our money is not unlimited.  :)

Significant community investment is being made this year in Europe, 
India, South America, and Asia.  These are areas that have, in the past, 
only received small amounts of funding.  All Fedora contributors in 
those parts of the world will have opportunities to organize, attend, 
and participate in events this year that never existed before.

=======

I hope this email serves to give everyone some of my own views into the 
Fedora EMEA e.V. and also into how worldwide budget decisions are 
weighed and managed.

I am happy to talk in depth about any more of this, either on the list, 
or in person at LinuxTag.

--Max