[Devel] Changing the (legal) structure of OpenHatch so that it's easier to take donations

[Asheesh Laroia]

(Note: This email has gotten absurdly long. Sorry about that.)

On Wed, 29 Jun 2011, Jessica McKellar wrote:

> Hi Asheesh,
> I have a couple of questions.
>
>       the Login Team and other processes cover how people get access to our resources.
> 
> 
> I'd like to know more about the processes you are envisioning for 
> allocating money. Is everything voted on by the Login Team? Do you as 
> authorized spender decide?  

I was trying to highlight the different process between the code and the 
spending.

What I was thinking of, so that you understand what I was writing, was 
that the code is more participatory, but that the spending decisions are 
less participatory.

I now see that it's unclear in my original words; I meant the Login Team 
controls access to digital resources, like servers, but I didn't mean to 
include money or physical things in the "resources" bit there.

I'd be okay with other processes, but I really want the money handing-out 
to be super light-weight. I'll write more below:

>       For most OpenHatch code contributors, this won't actually change
>       anything. Someone will continue to pay the bills for hosting the site,
>       and people's travel on OpenHatch-y things will
>       continue to be paid for, either by the individual, or by OpenHatch itself.
> 
> Here is a hypothetical situation: you, me, and two people who are 
> organizers for the Boston Python Workshop but aren't otherwise 
> affiliated with OpenHatch are traveling across the country to run a 
> workshop clone. Whose travel expensive are subsidized here? You, you and 
> mean, all four of us equally, everyone on a sliding scale based on 
> income?

Good question.

There are a few different possible answers. In my mind, there are two 
separate dimensions to the answers.

First: What policy is used to decide how money is spent?

Second: To whom is that policy implementer responsible?

Your question, to me, is mostly a request of information about the policy.

I want to clarify that I was only actually intending to address the 
question of to whom the implementor is responsible. My intended answer 
was: the implementor (me, at the start) is not directly accountable to 
anyone. I was aiming for that scenario, which as I believe is what Debian 
does, because it strikes me as simple.

The interesting thing is that even if the authorized spender is always the 
one who makes the final say, your question about policy is a good one.

In your example, there are four different results. They can come from many 
different policies. For example (for now, let's say that we're only 
talking about under what circumstances to permit travel reimbursement):

"Spend the money eagerly on anything that seems helpful to OpenHatch" -- 
this could easily result in all four getting sponsorship.

"Spend the money eagerly on anything that seems helpful to OpenHatch, but 
only for people who ask for it" -- that could actually result in any of 
the four scenarios you describe.. Here's a few more policies that could 
lead to a few different outcomes:

"The authorized spender sets a total budget for travel for that event, and 
then permit sponsorship of anyone who asks for it, and who is using that 
travel toward anything that seems helpful to OpenHatch, averaging it out"

"The authorized spender sets a total budget for travel for that event, and 
then permit sponsorship of anyone who asks for it, but sort people by 
perceived need"

"The authorized spender sets a total budget for travel for that event, and 
then permit sponsorship of anyone who asks for it, but sort people by past 
involvement in OpenHatch"

"The authorized spender sets a total budget for travel for that event, and 
then permit sponsorship of anyone who asks for it, but sort people by past 
involvement in OpenHatch and perceived need"

And even then, how "strongly" do you sort by past involvement in OpenHatch 
and need? That's one of the cruxes of your question about you, you+me, 
you+me+others.

Another criteria is the income (i.e, need-based)one. One funny thing here 
is that I plan to have no income for the next year and a half, so I would 
do pretty well by that metric. (-:

One related issue I want to mention is that of clarity: we have created an 
institutional structure for code+deployment power within OpenHatch: That's 
the login team. That's not a super democratic one, but at least it's 
reasonably clear at least how to become part of it: Ask me, and I'll tell 
you a yes or no.

We haven't created institutional structures for what makes an event an 
OpenHatch event, and we haven't done anything like empower other people to 
make events OpenHatch-y. So it's pretty tied to me at this stage. I think 
that as we branch out (I think you're excited about creating more Boston 
Python Workshop clones that are true to the goal of diversifying 
*existing* communities; we could maybe call those OpenHatch-affiliated), 
we'll come up with more criteria for that. I expect that I'm going to 
learn more of what I want as I run more Penn workshop clones, and I get to 
see which people "get it".  Then maybe we would even sponsor 
university-based workshops that are run by people that I have met at these 
clones!

Okay, so to return (slowly) to your actual question: The policy I would 
plan to implement would be that people have to ask in order to get 
sponsorship, and that I would make a final decision, and it would aim to 
be need-based but also prioritize people who have a commitment to the aims 
of OpenHatch, even if they're contributors to the project's software. The 
real point of the travel funding would be make possible what would 
otherwise be impossible.

If we have a whole bunch of money, then I could imagine sponsoring the 
small-ish cost of travel to NYC for everyone, but my instinct is to 
reserve the money for situations where bigger costs like airfare make the 
difference between something being possible and it not being possible. 
(Also, this way, we are more likely to e.g. request a Python Sprints 
grant, which we'd be quite likely to get.)

So in the case of group travel for a Boston Python Workshop clone: I'd say 
probably no one would get sponsorship because the travel costs would be 
under a hundred dollars per head.

Since the point is to make possible what would otherwise be impossible, 
I'm likely to say that "small" travel funding that's part of a bigger 
travel task (like, say, if I'm already in Atlanta and can tack on a bus 
ride to Spartanburg to teach an open source immersion class) then I'd lean 
toward spending the money on that. It would be easy (and reasonable, I 
think!) to also justify that in terms of need-based-ness, too, and the 
fact that I'd "ask", and that evidence indicates that people like the 
Penn-type workshops as I run them.

This is what I'm thinking for a year or so, as I wrote in the previous 
email. Then sometime, maybe 2013, there's another transition waiting for 
OpenHatch: If I am enjoying working on it enough, then I am likely to try 
to fund-raise for it and have it be its own non-profit, which would likely 
mean hiring a staffer, which would have its own whole process of creating 
a board so that the people on the board can decide on who the staff should 
be. That'll be an exciting can of worms if we get to it. There's a serious 
chance that such a first employee would not be me; maybe someone else will 
be a better fit! But that's a conversation for later, as I see it.

So: In your Boston Python Workshop travel case, I'd say that under my 
reign, we would probably not sponsor any of that travel, but that if there 
were particular requests that were need-based, then we maybe would. I 
think in that case, the Python Software Foundation would sponsor it, and 
if not, then people with jobs probably wouldn't receive sponsorship, which 
is likely to result in just me requesting+receiving sponsorship. In group 
situations like that, I'd rather not have to choose between people, so I'd 
lean toward "nobody".

I probably could have just written that and spared all this long rambling, 
but now you all know lots of what's on my mind.

>       Initially, most of the expenses (by dollar count) are basically definitely going to go toward my next year of touring the US and running teaching open source events like the one at Penn.
>       I want to be clear that this isn't going to enrich me; it'll just pay for some bus rides or airline fares. I'll still probably end up sleeping on people's couches when I arrive in those
>       cities.
> 
> 
> If you are willing to share: how much money did OpenHatch start with, 
> how much did it end with, and what is the breakdown in spending between 
> maintenance, travel, and any other major categories that haven't been 
> mentioned?

I am willing to share a little, mostly in the hope that my future 
biographers will read this. (-;

OpenHatch Inc.'s finances are a set of private facts. I do want to keep 
them mostly that way, partly because I'm always afraid that too-full 
disclosure will reveal I did something wrong and put me into some 
horrifying liability or law-related situation.

I am happy to give some vague history. I'll do it based on my 
recollection. That way, in the future, if someone wants to hang me based 
on this document, I can say I mis-remembered.

Most (probably >90%) of OpenHatch Inc.'s money went to salaries (or other 
similar compensation) of the co-founders when we were employees. In 2009, 
it also went to costs like office supplies, travel, capital assets, some 
consumable office expenses.

Spending sharply declined in July 2010, when it started having no 
employees. It has paid for a little travel since then, to the tune of 
$300-ish. Hosting and domains and the SSL cert have cost about $73 a 
month. There were some other business management expenses (like payroll 
and some insurance, to the tune of $200/mo) that it kept paying until 
about February 2011. That's not super much in terms of corporate bank 
accounts.

For other details, like the actual specifics of how much it raised, I 
think I'd prefer to talk about OpenHatch Inc.'s detailed financial history 
off-list. It was never very rich, and nor were we who worked for it. (-: I 
don't know exactly how much money will be left after I finish dissolving 
it; I imagine that handling that properly will cost some money. (Jessica, 
I would be willing to say more in person about that.)

Well. I hope that helps! I'm hitting 'send' now before I spend any more 
time on this email!

-- Asheesh.