[Ambassadors] EMEA Membership Questions
Max Spevack
mspevack at redhat.com
Fri May 16 02:41:14 UTC 2008
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
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