Hey Robert,

On December 6, 2016 at 1:31 PM Robert Scheck <robert@fedoraproject.org> wrote:

Hello Giannis,

while it might be not great to wait for getting reimbursed in general, I

think we really improved a lot. Let me give you an example from somewhen
between 2008 and 2010: I attended an event and the reimbursement happened
about one year after (in cash), when I attended the event the next time.
And this is not meant to blame somebody, but to show a real case from the
past, thus getting reimbursed currently in less than 3 month is something
we IMHO should be simply grateful for; it is a very positive achievement!

I see, we have improved a lot indeed. However, I believe there is space for even further improvement.

I had various kinds of expenses in the past also during my regular dayjobat different employers...and even they needed something between 7 days and
two months to reimburse me. While some might treat this as not comparable,
I think it is. In the Fedora case, we also have additionally to see, note
and value that somebody is doing the reimburses in her/his free time and
not as part of her/his regular dayjob.

We totally appreciate the contributions of the CC holders. We are merely looking for ways to make their work and the current process faster and easier. :)

That's why I think that it's totallyacceptable (at least for me) that the Fedora reimburse process may take up
to 2 or 3 months; we talk about expenses that are still substantial parts
of my monthly salary; maybe not each, but a flight ticket is still up to a
few hundred EUR.

The Fedora community is extremely diverse - we have contributors coming from various backgrounds. While some people might find the current waiting times totally acceptable, I can tell you there others who are facing difficulties. :/

PayPal is indeed another topic, however there are also US-based constraintsinvolved (or local banks/politics on the destination side), where I guess
we can not do much; especially for the first part, where Red Hat would have
the same limitations like any US-based company. Working around PayPal could
also get pricey when thinking about that simple SEPA bank transfers within
EEA (EU + EFTA) seem to consume at least 5 EUR for a <100 EUR transfer.

Looking at Joerg's reports, I notice Paypal has some high fees as well. But I guess they're lower than some other alternative solutions/platforms.

Andsomething like Western Union could be legally quite questionable, it's IMHO
banned for good reasons at different companies; but I don't have a specific
clue about Red Hat here though. But in the very last end, using a bunch of
payment providers for reimbursement adds IMHO much more work to the persons
doing this work currently in their free time. And as often we transfer the
money, as more charges and conversion fees get IMHO applied - while we have
still a credit card as our base provided by Red Hat.

I do not know whether RH prefers to avoid WU or not. I'd like to gain some insight.

AFAIK, Mozilla has been using WU as an alternative reimbursement method, too.

As I said in the beginning, waiting to get reimbursed is never great, but Ialso think here, we shouldn't ask for too much, given we are not doing that
as daily job, but in our free time as volunteers (at least most of us).

We do that in our free time, that is true. We should appreciate the sponsorships we receive, that is true as well. But, some people get discouraged due to the current reimbursement waiting times. I personally wish that more and more contributors would feel comfortable with the workarounds we will apply.

Thank you.
-Giannis