Create report of spending

[rbvermaa]

Once we start spending money, we should have a report about how much we are spending and on what, so that people donating money can see what we are using the donations for.

[sjmackenzie]

Probably want to take a look at this: http://ledger-cli.org/

[Baughn]

So, in light of the recent capacity issues on Hydra, I think this bug has become more important.

This is just anecdotal, but for my own part I haven't set up any kind of donation; my only contributions are in the form of code, and I'm more likely to try running my own Hydra (or pursuing other technical solutions) than to help expand the existing one.

Which is somewhat silly, but it's an inevitable result of not having a public budget, and I don't think I'm alone in this.

So, +1 for fixing that. It'll pay off if you do.

[grahamc]

Perhaps an informal note of "this is the sort of stuff we spend money on each month"? To help answer the question: why donate money to the NixOS Foundation?

[Baughn]

Anything is better than nothing.

At the rate NixOS is expanding, you're going to need a treasurer and rules-compliant ledgering soon enough, but at the moment there's nothing at all.

[itsN1X]

@Baughn So, where's the budget? Can I help anyhow?

[Baughn]

@itsN1X I'm not on the core team. You're asking the wrong guy.

@grahamc?

[itsN1X]

Umm.. @grahamc ? @garbas ?

[grahamc]

Not me! :)

[itsN1X]

@domenkozar ?

[domenkozar]

Yeah me :(

[rbvermaa]

@domenkozar Any chance you'll be able to work on it this week or so? Remember, no is also an answer ;-)

[itsN1X]

I'm kinda free this week till uni starts in full swing, and could commit some time to this project. @domenkozar add me to the crew?

[grahamc]

Hey @itsN1X, unfortunately there are probably three people in this world capable of doing this ticket, and two of them are already here. I've noticed you around, asking to be added to the NixOS organization. For what its worth, that usually only happens after a long history of consistent and quality pull requests to the https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs project. Just thought I'd let you know. It is great having new and enthusiastic NixOS users in our community!

[itsN1X]

Umm, okay, is there any way I might be of help?

[domenkozar]

It's in my calendar for 21st January.

[domenkozar]

Life has been a bit of a pain lately, but I have not given up on this :)

[grahamc]

👀

[Baughn]

You're literally leaving money on the floor. :p

[domenkozar]

Things are better now. One thing to note is that I'll create a report for donations and describe for what money is used, we don't have a good report for spending yet.

[domenkozar]

@rbvermaa is working on spending data, I have started work on the reports.

[aflatter]

😶 I'm still interested in this and more generally would love to hear about what the foundation is doing.

[Baughn]

I'm a little worried. It seems like there aren't enough core members to handle everything that needs doing.

[grahamc]

@rbvermaa added a chart to nixos.org of donations: https://nixos.org/nixos/foundation.html but unfortunately not spending. I think the foundation largely spends on a few hetzner machines for Hydra, but I don't know.

[grahamc]

1. Regarding "core members," You're probably right, but note there aren't really "defined" core members. Many/most of the people perceived as "core" are just regulars who can be counted on to do things... not actually recognized as such. I think this structure is a bit challenging for greater org things, like funding reports :)

2. I've been researching applying to have NixOS move to be under the software freedom conservancy. Unofficially. I think there is some interest in this from other people in the NixOS community too.

Successfully doing # 2 means solving # 1 though.

NixOS is growing like crazy, we need to transition to a bigger model of working now, I think.

[domenkozar]

Given how little time and energy we have to work on this problem, I'm very much in favor of outsourcing it.

The price we pay is 5%, but we'd have completely transparent nix/os funding and I think we can easily raise more than that on behalf of transparency. Both all donations and expenses are openly available and searchable/downloadable.

The most attractive option is https://opencollective.com, they have a company and two non-profits.

[Profpatsch]

I would recommend working with https://techcultivation.org/.

They don’t (yet) have a shiny “Patreon-like” frontend for small donations, but a team of experts with a solid understanding of and excellent connections into the FOSS community. Plus, they know how to work with official funding (e.g. they have grant projects through the EU and the Ford Foundation, and organized several projects with the Prototype Fund).

They are a German non-profit company and have been certified as “equivalent to a U.S. public charity” recently, which means they are allowed to issue donation receipts.

There is a meeting weekend in Berlin this week, and I’m going to investigate whether collaborating with the NixOS Foundation is possible from their side.

Disclaimer: I’m good friends with one of their chairs, and have worked for them part-time in the past.

[domenkozar]

Seems like they are still in development mode while open collective already has what we need to accept donations, so what's the benefit for waiting? :)

[Profpatsch]

I don’t know Open Collective well enough to tell you the difference, but I’ll report back here once I’ve talked to TC.

[domenkozar]

[Profpatsch]

Okay, from a short talk with one of the techcultivation.org chairs: At the moment they don’t have the capacity to take the NixOS foundation, but he’d love to work with us once they are set up.

OpenCollective and TC are not exclusive to each other, the services of both can be useful. For example, private donations could be handled by OC and stuff like long-time funding, payment of developers, and legal advice by TC.

[domenkozar]

Cool :) I don't know how to proceed here, but would like to give OC a shot for donations.

PS: There are projects that pay developers full time via OC.

[zimbatm]

@domenkozar what is it that you want to fund? OC could be created for the security team independently of the foundation (for example). This would be a good way to test the waters.

[domenkozar]

For now I'd limit the fund to:

• infrastructure costs (hardware, internet bills)
• funding of community events (meetups, sprints, etc)

We can expand that scope later on. There are some specific rules to be laid out how someone can claim reimbursement of expenses for an event.

[davidak]

When we would join SFC/SPI/..., they would do this work, right? #3

[domenkozar]

I suggest we close this as NixOS is now part of Open Collective: http://opencollective.com/nixos

OC is in active development, so they'll keep adding new donation methods while keeping transparency.