A gap in the policy - PLC vs Conservancy

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Andrew Bartlett wrote at 05:18 (EST):
> For example, without specific prior authorization, flights from NZ,
> except to Australia, are essentially prohibited.

This is a known bug, for sure.  I'd been hoping someone would propose a
patch that flights across the Pacific and/or that cross two oceans, the
"auto-approved" price is increased.  If no one proposed that, I'll
likely do it when the tuit comes along, but I'd love if someone else
would do the work and create a gitorious merge request for it. :)

Regardless, that specific problem is easily fixed.

> The problem with this is that a contributor comes to the PLC and does
> the good work, provides a reasonable pre-estimate etc, and is
> approved.
...
> The problem I see it is that everyone is in a bind - the Conservancy has
> the un-enviable position of having to back the PLC against it's own
> policy, or leaving a volunteer out of pocket.   Perhaps it would be
> better if the conservancy pre-approved things?

You've described the overall bind quite clearly: ultimately, Conservancy
is fiscally responsible for its own policy, but we don't have the
staffing to do preapprovals of all the travel without volunteer help,
and we seek that volunteer help from the PLCs.

Frankly, and Samba (the project Andrew is from) is a model citizen.  The
Samba PLC has done the best work of any member project [0] in trying to
implement Conservancy's policy, and even you are having trouble.  That
definitely concerns me.

If Conservancy had the funding, we'd have someone whose primary job was
bookkeeping and logistics, and Karen would likely assign them task of
reviewing pre-approval requests for travel.  But, we don't have that at
the moment: I'm doing to the bookkeeping myself because we don't have
anyone else who can do (I don't think the Distinguished Technologists at
companies have to fill in at the accounting department with 20% of their
work time. ;) Thus, I and Karen really rely on the PLCs to implement the
policy.

That said, the policy is complicated.  (I wrote some of it, and still
often have to look up the details.)  Tony wrote a while back the "short
tutorial" at the top which hits the highlights, but most travelers and
PLCs forget those details too.

Ultimately, Andrew's point speaks to  this fundamental kernel of truth
of Conservancy: our goal is to take care of these sorts of logistics so
the PLCs don't have to, but in this case, the workload is so high we
can't do it without volunteer help.

So, given that, I'm open to suggestions on how to improve the process.
More thoughts, anyone?


[0] There are many member projects who are close second to Samba here,
    so I hope those who also do a good job won't be offended that I note
    that Samba is the best. ;)
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn
President & Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom Conservancy