• Question to candidates: new legal entity for Debian worldwide

    From Joost van =?utf-8?Q?Baal-Ili=C4=87?@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 22 07:10:01 2024
    Hi,

    There has been discussion of having one new legal entity representing
    the Debian project worldwide. What are the candidates opinions on that?

    Bye,

    Joost

    PS: I am eagerly awaiting a platform from
    Sruthi Chandran . Up to now there still is the old one at https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/platforms/srud .

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  • From Andreas Tille@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 22 11:00:01 2024
    Hi Joost,

    Am Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 06:51:48AM +0100 schrieb Joost van Baal-Ilić:
    There has been discussion of having one new legal entity representing
    the Debian project worldwide. What are the candidates opinions on that?

    Could you please add some pointers to recent discussions about this.
    I've found some 20 year old thread[1].

    Our constitution says:
    SPI and Debian are separate organisations who share some goals.
    Debian is grateful for the legal support framework offered by SPI.

    I've also found some discussion about the legal entity of DebConf
    in past years[3].

    My guess is you are not refering to any of those points. Any pointers
    to recent discussion are welcome. I'm aware about the EU legislation
    regarding Cyber Resilience Act, Product Liability Directive and CSAM
    Regulation but I have no idea whether our answer should be becoming a
    legal entity.

    Its as always in Debian: We are a Do-o-cracy. The person who does the
    job can decide what gets done. Those who really strongly believe that a
    legal entity is the answer to major problems in Debian might run this
    effort, find consensus to run a GR changing the consitution - whatever
    seems to be necessary. If we do not find competent volunteers this will
    not happen.

    Personally I decided to become a physicst and not a lawyer since I
    consider the laws of physics simple, easy to describe and perfectly able
    to verify in practice. This is all very distinct to the laws we have
    given ourself in society and I'm no expert in the latter. Thus I simply
    feel not comfortable in giving statements about things I do not full understand.

    I personally see and (hopefully) understand lots of technical problems
    which I would like to tackle. Since the time I can dedicate to the job
    is not unlimited I will decide to do things I feel competent and thus
    more efficient. I will not stop others solving additional problems and
    if those people manage to convince me that it is important for Debian I
    might support this.

    Kind regards
    Andreas.

    [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/12/msg00647.html
    [2] https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution.en.html#item-9
    [3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/04/msg00070.html

    PS: I am eagerly awaiting a platform from
    Sruthi Chandran . Up to now there still is the old one at https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/platforms/srud .

    https://www.debian.org/vote/2024/platforms/srud

    --
    https://fam-tille.de

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  • From Joost van =?utf-8?Q?Baal-Ili=C4=87?@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 22 10:20:02 2024
    On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 06:51:48AM +0100, Joost van Baal-Ilić wrote:

    <snip>
    PS: I am eagerly awaiting a platform from
    Sruthi Chandran . Up to now there still is the old one at https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/platforms/srud .

    Oops: apparently I missed https://www.debian.org/vote/2024/platforms/srud . Sorry.



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  • From Pierre-Elliott =?utf-8?Q?B=C3=A9cue@21:1/5 to joostvb-debian@mdcc.cx on Fri Mar 22 12:00:01 2024
    Joost van Baal-Ilić <joostvb-debian@mdcc.cx> wrote on 22/03/2024 at 09:54:35+0100:

    On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 06:51:48AM +0100, Joost van Baal-Ilić wrote:

    <snip>
    PS: I am eagerly awaiting a platform from
    Sruthi Chandran . Up to now there still is the old one at
    https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/platforms/srud .

    Oops: apparently I missed https://www.debian.org/vote/2024/platforms/srud . Sorry.

    And thanks for opening the rig:

    I have one question regarding Sruthi's platform.

    In it, it is stated that: " I would like to revisit our relationship
    with the existing trusted organisations, fund management procedure and
    if needed, explore the possibilities of having more TOs to reduce
    dependency on one or two. During DebConf23 organising, we had to face
    numerous fund distribution issues. Some of it definitely was specific to
    Indian scenario, but still I could think of a lot of improvement that
    can be done with respect to fund distribution through TOs."

    Being Debian France's treasurer since 2019 (dunno yet if treasurer will
    be my main endeavour should I be reelected this year, but I'll
    definitely continue to help as much as I can whatever my role becomes),
    I have two issues:

    1. Many TOs create more liabilities: I have a certain memory of ffis
    eV, which disappeared with Debian assets. It's already hard to
    follow how things go under three TOs, so if we go to more, how do
    you expect to cope and avoid similar scenarii or worse?
    2. SPI is too centric in the TO ecosystem.

    After having spent two years in DF Treasurer, and more than 30 to
    50% of my Debian dedicated time attending to it, I learnt that a)
    SPI takes 5% of anything it receives for Debian (Debian France does
    not do that and will never do that) and b) it own 90% of Debian
    assets while it's very slow to process much things and is reluctant
    to rebalance these.

    What's "funny" is that this situation led DebConf organizers to ask
    us to become the spine of DebConf registration financial aspects, as
    it seems despite being alone (not anymore since the end of 2022, <3
    jipege) and not paid for it, I'm more reactive (and yet, some people
    could tell that sometimes I take far too much time, and I'd like to
    apologize for that) on these matters, and also keen on trying to
    find solutions when things go outside of the defined frame.

    So, what seems important to me is rather this aspect. How did we get
    here? What do we intent do to about it? Incorporating Debian is a
    fine idea to me, and I'd still be happy to manage Debian assets, but
    at some point, the dyfunctional aspect, to me, is rather the way SPI
    evolved and the relation that resulted from this evolution.

    I'd like to hear both your feelings on this, and I'd really appreciate
    to get Jonathan's insights on this, too, as he did the DPL job for a
    long time and might have clues I don't have and failed to get from him
    (bc he's busy) over IRC chat.

    Thanks

    --
    PEB

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