[OSGeo Oceania] Board - sharing budget doc

John Bryant johnwbryant at gmail.com
Tue Aug 20 23:46:30 PDT 2019


I'm seeing a lot of support for publishing the budget, based on the benefit
to the community and potential future organisers of this and other events.
But also a few arguments against, which we need to consider, I'll try to
summarise here.

   1. We shouldn't put others' intellectual property and commercially
   sensitive material into the public domain
   2. The budget is our own IP, which we should retain
   3. We may give too much info to caterers and other suppliers, and lose
   our bargaining position with regard to pricing
   4. We may give too much info to PCOs, and lose our bargaining position
   with regard to pricing
   5. We may put ourselves at a disadvantage when it comes to seeking
   funding, by sharing too much

Re: point 1, I strongly agree and the proposed public document has been
redacted to take this into account. If there's still anything specific in
there that needs a change, let's do it.

Re: point 2, I generally disagree, I don't see it as compatible with our
position as an org responsible to an open community. I don't see a value
proposition in classifying this specific information as protected. But
would be interested to hear others' views on this.

Re: point 3, For the most part, our service providers (caterers, A/V,
equipment rental, etc) are competing in a local market against other
similar providers, and would be unlikely to be able to use this information
to their benefit. They often have set pricing schedules, and probably don't
have time or inclination to find our public budget document and play us
accordingly. By getting quotes from several providers in each case, we can
make sure we're getting competitive pricing.

Re: point 4, I don't have much experience with PCOs, I'm having trouble
understanding how the information in this budget doc would disadvantage us
in that relationship. Why would knowing how much we spent on catering in
2018 impact on this?

Re: point 5, again, I am having trouble seeing this. Is there an example
situation where the specific information in this budget would put us at a
competitive disadvantage in a funding proposal?
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