I think I am merely echoing what Steve is already saying but it feels like I should add a perspective.
I am coming at this as the significant other of someone that has worked for years at North American nonprofits.
While a million dollars might seem like a big number on the surface, it really isn't when you consider staff salary, taxes, some basic benefits, expenses, travel, operations, events and vendors. To top that off, something like Jakarta EE has to deal with some kind of third party event sponsorship. There is nothing wrong with asking questions and looking for transparency. On the surface though, it looks to me like the budget is already pretty lean when compared with what the Eclipse Foundation will need to do once significantly feature rich Jakarta EE releases are produced.
Please note views expressed here are my own as an individual community member and do not reflect the views of my employer.
Hi
I want to pick up on a general point here and I am not arguing that every line item of the budget shouldn’t be public (except personal data) or that budget setting shouldn’t be rigorous, transparent
and accountable. However I want to set in context a couple of aspects.
First Eclipse Foundation is a small not for profit foundation with a $6.9M turnover (source:
2020 Annual Community Report | The Eclipse Foundation) the salaries of Eclipse Foundation staff aren’t magically already paid for doing their job. The income for the Eclipse
Foundation predominantly comes from membership fees and Working Group fees and therefore a portion of the working group fees will inevitably be indirectly paying for Eclipse staff.
Second the budget of the Jakarta EE WG is set by the WG members at the steering committee/marketing committee as these are the people that actually pay the working group fees. The level of the WG
membership fees is determined by the budget and the fees are scaled by organisation size with $0 for small participant members and others (jakarta_ee_working_group_participation_agreement.pdf
(eclipse.org)).
Do we have the power to reduce the budget? Yes we do?
Could volunteers do some of the things paid for by the working group? I’m sure they could but asking the Eclipse Foundation to do them guarantees they get done without imposing an unfair burden on
an unpaid volunteer. I think the working group contracting the services from the Eclipse Foundation actually preserves vendor neutrality otherwise there is a danger that the company with the most resources could staff a lot of the “volunteer” positions.
Could we contract different providers for some of the services provided by the EF? I imagine we could if someone wanted to spend the time to do the economic analysis of alternatives.
I am all for value for money, openness and rigour but I also don’t think something as important as Jakarta EE should be ran on a shoe-string or purely rely on unpaid volunteers. There is therefore
a balance to be struck.
Steve
From: jakarta.ee-wg-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx <jakarta.ee-wg-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx>
On Behalf Of Markus KARG
Sent: 20 December 2020 09:42
To: 'Jakarta EE Working Group' <jakarta.ee-wg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [jakarta.ee-wg] Budget question
I really like to understand where Money goes to and what the actual benefit was. So it would be nice if the EF or Steering Committee could share the details about this:
- For the Jakarta EE 8 Platform which was released last year we have a compatibility and branding process for which we have 10-16 compatible implementations depending on how you count, including Eclipse GlassFish
5.1.0.
What exactly was the money used here? The compatibility process is covered completely by the project members themselfs. For example, as part
of the Jakarta REST team, I did no see any money for being part of the certification process of e. g. Jersey. Btw, GlassFish ist not even part of Jakarta EE, but only of EE4J, so why is Jakarta EE money spend for GlassFish, how much, and for which services?
- The Eclipse Foundation was instrumental in delivering Jakarta EE 9 Platform and component specifications, enabling the operational forums through which the release was planned and delivered, the compute/build
infrastructure for specs, TCKs and Eclipse GlassFish compatible implementation development (and many of the component compatible implementations), chairing of the spec committee that drove the spec process, leading planning for announcing the release, and
additional direct contributions to the work of the Specification and Steering Committees.
What exactly means "was instrumental"? Who did what and how much money was granted for that? As part of the Jakarta REST team, I have not seen
any compute/build infrastructure other than Github (which is free), Travis (which is free) and EF's Jenkins (which was used solely because the EF wants us to). So how much money was spend for that few builds on Jenkins? Maybe it makes more sense to spare that
money and go with Github Actions or Travis.
Why is money spent for "chairing the spec"? Everybody in that process is already paid by his employer for that, and no volunteers where part
of that. So how much money was spent to whom for "chairing the spec, leading planning, announcing"? I am pretty sure we find someone who does that for free, so we can spare that money.
- The Eclipse Foundation has delivered critical marketing services throughout the year, supporting the marketing committee in areas such as web site management, content creation, placing media artricles, blogs,
analyst briefings, press intebiews, sponsored conferences, four LiveStream events, driving and monitoring digital/social media, recruiting new WG members, committers and contributors, collaborations with JUGs, Jakarta YouTube Channel, Tech Talks, driving Jakarta
EE Developer Survey and more.
Which critical marketing services do you mean? Please name them, and the amount spent. I have not seen any "criticial" marketing. How much
money was spent into "web site magement", and for which web sites? The sites we see publicly can be managed by volunteers, no money needed for that. Please share the amounts for the YouTube Channel, Tech Talks, and the Survey, too. I am sure we can spare a
lot here.
- The above represents a significant amount of activity, which the EF staff contributes extensively to, either by direct delivery, or by coordinating, monitoring and driving to conclusion.
This reads rather bogus. The EF staff is completely paid by the EF already for doing that job.
Sorry for saying that, but this all looks like "Gentlemen's agreement", not like being "open" in the sense of "transparent". To be accepted
by the broad community as a neutral and democratic organization, we must clearly tell frankly about each single dollar spend, to whom, and for what exactly.
I'd like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your contributions to Jakarta EE during CY2020, to the Eclipse Foundation management and staff, and to all of the members of the Jakarta EE Working
Group and the Jakarta EE community for their contributions as well. This has been an unusual and difficult year for many of us, requiring more than the usual amount of flexibility and adaptability. As this year comes to a close, a big "thank you" to all.
I hope you have the opportunity to take a break, and recharge for 2021.
Will
On 12/17/20 1:28 PM, Werner Keil wrote:
No it works without password, at least the one Tanja attached.
And did you read the legend below the table
„Note: all amounts are in thousands of dollars“ ?;-)
Therefore it’s
* Staff 395k$
…
Everything else would seem quite ridiculous and cover just an hour or less :-D
Werner
In fact I wonder what actually the services are that the Working Group consumed here in a bit more detail…
* Staff 395$
* Program Services 140$
* Marketing 335$
* Other 305$
…as it means that de-facto the EF itself burned approx. 1 Mio. $ and frankly spoken - I cannot see a publicly visible result being worth a million.
-Markus
As you may have issues with accessing the Jakarta EE Steering Committee folder let me attach the .pdf with the information.
Regards,
Tanja
r not inspecting your question and my reply more carefully.
The presentation link I sent contained the 2020 approved budget and 2019 spend data as of November 2019 for 2020 budget comparison purposes.
In response to your question and Markus', we have prepared a summary of the Jakarta EE WG 2019 and 2020 budget and spend and the 2021 budget at:
--
Tanja Obradovic
Jakarta EE Program Manager |
Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Twitter: @TanjaEclipse
Eclipse
Foundation: The Platform for Open Innovation and Collaboration
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