Care-taking of Debian finances: assets and processes

Debian, as a volunteer project, relies on donations and in-kind gifts (e.g. hardware) to maintain its infrastructure and to support various development efforts, such as funding sprints and other developer gatherings. Debian's money and other assets are held by Software in the Public Interest (SPI) in the US, Verein zur Förderung Freier Informationen und Software e.V. (ffis) in Germany and additional entities in other countries. This talk will shed light on these organizational aspects of Debian, which have previously not been discussed much.

Specifically, the talk will:

• Discuss the relationship between Debian and organizations that hold assets on behalf of Debian.
• List the types of assets held by Debian (such as money, hardware, trademarks, and domain names)
• Present the approval process employed by the DPL when it comes to using Debian's assets.
• Discuss recent efforts to publish public statements about the assets held by Debian as well as inflows (donations, etc) and outflows (sprints, DebConf, etc).