Expense policy tweaks - do you agree?

Project management
1

Following Proposal to change expenses policy: AI subscriptions I had another look at the expense policy.

I’m not proposing concrete texts yet, but I can do that later if/when we agree on the idea.

a. Approval/objection period

I think we should formalise a period to raise concerns or objections. It can be added to the ‘General principles’ section.

Since folks might not visit the forum frequently, I was thinking of a period of 30 days. However, that’s a bit long: for the AI expenses you’d only know very late and the expense policy for events currently mentions that events must be announced at least 2 weeks in advance.

Maybe we can set it to 14 days?

b. Eligible contributors

These two sections are a bit similar. I can understand we might want to be a bit more strict for recurring/personal expenses. At the same time, it’s probably clearer if we align/streamline/merge them.

c. Example clean-up

I think we’ll soon have enough actual past cases that give context. I’d suggest to remove it - ideas don’t really belong in such policy.

d. Naming, tagging & category of expense proposals

In conjunction with point a. I think we should clearly name and tag expense proposals, so people can follow them on the forum and set notifications accordingly.

  • Naming & category: I believe we’ve been doing it already, but it might be good to ‘officially’ require proposals to start with ‘Expense proposal:’ and be placed under the ‘Project management’ category
  • Tagging: I think we can use an expense-proposal tag.

e. Developer tool subscriptions

The expenses policy doesn’t specify for how long a subscription can be covered and how often it must be re-requested. I reckon we want to keep some flexibility, but some guidance might not be a bad idea.

I think we can write that each request can cover a maximum of 6 months or the number of months the contributor has been ‘consistently active in the project’ since a previous request – whichever is smaller. I.e. if I’ve been actively contributing for 3 months (the current minimum), then I can ask for a subscription for the next three months. (Writing it like that, we may want to say ‘up to half of the active period’ - i.e. if three months active we can cover up to 1.5 month.)

What do you think of the proposed direction? If you agree, leave a heart. If you disagree, let us know why via a comment.

3

Why not a year if the annual cost is substantially less than renewing every three months?

4

Thanks @tonytamsf for asking what I propose! How about the following - yes I used an AI to help with the wording!

BESTEST
David

  1. Active developer definition. An “active developer” is someone who has made a contribution to the active codebase in both of the last two releases (whether alpha and/or beta), as evidenced by contributions recorded in GIT.

  2. Reimbursement eligibility and limits. An active developer may request reimbursement for an AI subscription expense for an initial three (3) months. After the initial three (3) months, and for any subsequent subscriptions under this policy, if the developer remains active, an additional three (3) month, six (6) month, or twelve (12) month subscription may be reimbursed, provided that the six (6) month subscription cost is less than 1.5× the three (3) month cost, and the twelve (12) month subscription cost is less than 3× the three (3) month cost.

5

I think @ByteHamster was suggesting not to allow for a full year’s subscription, as you pay for subscriptions (and claim back that money) up front and we can’t trust (because life happens sometimes) that a person will stick as ‘active contributor’ for that full year.

I do agree with that, but at the same time: we’re not very likely to pay for many subscriptions (we don’t have many contributors) and if, say, 6 months of subscriptions is ‘lost’ because someone becomes inactive, it’s not a super big deal - as in: we have the funds.

I like this definition but it does exclude non-code contributions. Think of a UX/UI designer which wants to get an LLM subscription to help with interface design in Penpot - they’d not be eligible. I think we could combine your definition with something more generic like ‘consistently active in the project’.

Also discussed in the monthly community call. I like the proposal but it still has the issue described above (contributor drops out, still benefits from paid subscription). Maybe what we can say is “up to the number of months the person has been actively contributing to the project or twelve months (whichever is shorter)”.