KDE e.V. transparency (was: Re: Voting rights - the GNOME way)

[Dirk Mueller]

Lars, Mirko, 

read below. 


On Mit, 27 Nov 2002, Rob Kaper wrote:

> I'm not opposing to an organization, not at all. I just feel that with the 
> current *public* information on the e.V., it is not clear to me why someone 
> should want to sign up or make a donation.

I see. I can agree here. 

> Yes, *I* know the e.V. paid the ETAP hotel for LinuxTag last year because I 
> was there. But I am sure a lot of developers might not know this, let alone 
> KDE users considering to make a donation. Adding such activities to the e.V. 
> website would greatly help because it would give some visibility. Just 
> because a lot of active KDE developers doesn't automatically give the body 
> credibility. The e.V. could do better to promote itself.

Note that while it is great to have people being reimbursed for such things, 
but KDE's financial status is not good enough to reimburse everybody for 
every work they do for KDE. Because after all, we're free software and don't
get any money for KDE releases. 

For example I've spend several hundred EURs on traveling "for KDE" as well 
and while it made my small budget even smaller (I have no regular income), I 
was still able to afford it. 

> More concrete goals would be naming a few specific events that are important 
> to KDE and its development. What's the amount of the donations? After paying 
> for servers and the likes, how much is left to be spent on events, flyers and 
> other stuff? What decisions are made to budget that money?

Thats correct, a financial report would be good. Its partially even me who 
you're hitting on, as Lars and I reviewed the report of the KDE e.V. 
treasurer, Mirko. 

Lars, Mirko, any chance that we could write something up and put it on the 
website?


> The lack of feedback some developers have been getting on their membership 
> status is also frustrating. Maybe everyone is just too busy or policies are 
> not in place to handle that kind of stuff speedily.

I'm not sure, but I think there were doubts upon accepting Neil as member. 
Part of the things to sort out is *how* to become a member. Things like 
"showing longterm commitment to KDE Project" were proposed. 

> > Oh boy.. no idea about what it does but trying to fork it. Have luck.
> It's a last resort.

A first resort would be to try to understand the scope first :)

> Hopefully I my membership application is processed quickly 
> and I can work from within to bring more visibility to the e.V. for the 
> average KDE user and developer.

You have my vote, please mention it in your membership application. 


-- 
Dirk (received 90 mails today)