On 07/07/18 05:35, Richard Brown wrote:

On 6 July 2018 at 18:49, Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:

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We had more issues with SUSE last year. Damaged hardware and full disks in the openSUSE infrastructure are an example. The replacement was declined because of missing money.

If we would have our own budget and an bank account with money by other sponsors, we have a lower number of such problems.

I wouldn't describe the situation with hardware as "declined because of missing money"

To understand the situation you need to understand the difference between Opertional Expenditures (OPEX) and Capitcal Expenditures (CAPEX)

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-difference-between-cape...

SUSE's sponsorship of openSUSE is done using an OPEX budget

That means the budget is annual, with operational expenditures being fully tax-deductible in the year they are made. OPEX budgets can only be used for things like Utilities, Travel Expenses, Merchandise, and the general funds needed to keep the openSUSE machine running smoothly.

Computer Hardware would be a Capital expenditure (CAPEX) CAPEX needs to be planned in advance and for tax purposes each capital asset is tracked for several years for depreciation.

ie. It's not something which can just be easily thrown around reactively, and has consequences lasting years.

SUSE has no CAPEX budget for openSUSE. None of our hardware sponsors have dedicated CAPEX budgets for openSUSE.

All hardware we have from all of our hardware sponsors (eg. SUSE, AMD, AppliedMicro, etc) is provided to us physically precisely so that openSUSE doesn't need to worry itself with the complexities of managing a CAPEX budget. That's why we have the big button for "Contribute Hardware" on opensuse.org that leads directly to our dedicated email address (donations@opensuse.org) for handling such arrangements

In the case you refer to, yes, a disk broke, but I consider it unreasonable to expect SUSE to have been able to magically create previously unbudgeted Capital funds to purchase the hardware required to replace that which was broken.

If we had our own budget, we'd likely have similar problems to magically allocate funds for such unexpected replacements. The laws regarding CAPEX and OPEX are likely to be MORE complicated for any budget operated by openSUSE, what with European and American laws being as they are for ensuring non-profits are not used for money laundering.

I think we are always going to be dependant on the goodwill of sponsors to provide us with hardware to operate at the scale we are used to.

As it happens in the case you refer to, I believe workarounds were found and put in place, services were kept running, and no major negative impact was felt by the project or contributors. And if we're lucky SUSE might even slip in a few line items into their next CAPEX budget planning for openSUSE to help relieve any pressure there.

Which means I think it's very different from the situation described by Christian where contributors were negatively impacted in very real terms, and we don't have any real mitigations available to avoid a possible repeat, besides good luck and best intentions.

For example the way that SPI Handles / Gets around this is by stating that any assets over $300 that we purchase with funds out of there account remain owned by SPI but are loaned indefinitely to the project that purchased them. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

On 13 July 2018 at 19:27, Bruno Friedmann wrote:

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For example the way that SPI Handles / Gets around this is by stating that any assets over $300 that we purchase with funds out of there account remain owned by SPI but are loaned indefinitely to the project that purchased them.

If it is owned by a US enterprise, how could we escape their laws there and respect other GRPD and so...

Last time we look at SPI solution (my board time), it was not possible to use the money easily outside of us, so could you double check the following use case.

An european generous donators give funds to the project, with for example half is used to bought hardware for datacenter(whatever place that one is) and the other half is for sponsoring directly people invest in event happening in EU ?

Thanks for your quest

SPI have a partner in Europe for facilitating donations http://www.ffis.de/Verein/spi-en.html -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 14/07/18 23:22, Axel Braun wrote:

Am 13. Juli 2018 20:52:59 MESZ schrieb Richard Brown :

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...

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For example the way that SPI Handles / Gets around this is by

stating

...

that any assets over $300 that we purchase with funds out of there account remain owned by SPI but are loaned indefinitely to the

...

...

that purchased them.

If it is owned by a US enterprise, how could we escape their laws

...

and respect other GRPD and so...

Last time we look at SPI solution (my board time), it was not

On 13 July 2018 at 19:27, Bruno Friedmann wrote: project there possible to use

...

the money easily outside of us, so could you double check the following use case.

An european generous donators give funds to the project, with for example half is used to bought hardware for datacenter(whatever place that one is) and the other half is for sponsoring directly people invest in event happening in EU ?

Thanks for your quest

SPI have a partner in Europe for facilitating donations

http://www.ffis.de/Verein/spi-en.html

So why not going directly with ffis?

Maybe we will, we are investigating a number of different foundations / organizations that we could partner with. To assess which if any is best for openSUSE to partner with. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B