Discussion
Generous folks:
I would like to set up a fund that would reduce volunteer cash outlays for reimbursement.
Not everyone can afford such outlays and not everyone gets reimbursed despite holding up their part of the bargain.
I have a few parter organizations in mind and wouldn’t rule out forming a new one.
Ping me if this interests you.
@dexter am I reading this correctly it’d be an escrow that buffers delays in reimbursements in favour of volunteers?
Would I get my contribution back if the fund dissolves or am I calculating an expense?
I.e. is this a donation or a no-cap-gains-park-my-money with the benefit of FOSS volunteers have greater agency and less stress?
@janl Yes.
I hadn’t considered that!
Yes.
The risks I’ve seen are:
Events that reimburse can in fact go bankrupt, and there are times they probably should.
Presenters expecting reimbursement understandably take a gamble on inflexible tickets and for $valid_reasons may not be able to travel and/or attend. A buffer should exist for this , even if only for trip insurance (assuming we can find meaningful trip insurance!)
From there, people or events may abuse the system but rest assured, members of our community generally have better memories than elephants.
Your additional thoughts and observations please!
@dexter if it would be a situation of “I park some money for community good”, but I can get it back in full eventually (maybe after a fixed term, or at fixed intervals choose to pull out), and possibly with a bit of insurance added, I think you’d find a few folks who’d put in say 1k€/£/$.
If there is a risk of losing that money, that’d be not great :)
@janl Zero risk = zero events.
Arguably zero open source.
But I hear ya.
I will never understand the vast differences in appetite for risk, given headlines describing “billions lost on AI”. Appreciating of course personal risk vs. personal risk proxied through companies/stocks/etc.
@dexter manageable risk as in “if one event or contributor turns out to be a bad egg, everybody in the pool loses 1-5%” would be totally fine.
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