[RFC] RTI for FOSS United

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This has been an interesting thought experiment for me for some time. If we had an RTI mechanism for FOSS United, what would it be called ? FRUIT, of course!

FRUIT >= FU + RTI

Here’s a simple FRUIT query I have:

For IndiaFOSS 2027, how much effort did the FU staff put in ? Please list the names of all the FU staff who worked for IndiaFOSS 2027, what roles they played, and a rough estimate of effort put in by each (person-days, or month units)

This may look simple, but this is an important and valuable statistic. We call IndiaFOSS a conference that is run by volunteers. But we all know staff plays an important role. All this while, we have had Staff and Interns labelled as “volunteers” on the platform (github issue). So, to what what extent is our claim of being “volunteer run” justified ?

It is useful to have a rough estimate here. If we know it, we can track it, and we can hope to improve things - with the goal of being more of a “volunteer run” event. This aligns with our goal of being community led.

@rahulporuri what do you think the FRUIT mechanism should be ? Separate category on the forum ? Dos and donts ? What should be “out of scope” ? I will send this to the Governance Board also for discussion.

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Realized that the data being sought is important for another reason as well. The way we do accounting and announce the budget for IndiaFOSS.

We’ve never included staff as a “cost”, but I think it makes sense to notionally think about it that way. I’ve made the point about “Faciliator” vs “Staff” to account for Staff actually volunteering (details in the github issue quoted above), going above and beyond the call of duty.

So, while the mechanics are discussed etc, I’d appreciate if @rahulporuri you could furnish these details within 30 days, that will really help us publish the complete budget of IndiaFOSS 2026.