Travel: Use GFM markup for the flight time/budget table.

This looks a little less good in ASCII, but lets us automate conversion to
HTML.

Travel: More expensive flights that provide comparable time savings are in-Policy.

The current "lowest fare + $100" rule is simple, but provides less and less
choice as distances get longer. The most common feedback we hear about the
travel policy is a wish to have more flexibility to choose shorter flights.
This provides that flexibility by allowing more expensive flights that
provide time savings, while keeping the rules relatively simple.

Travel: Allow specific expenses to be approved by any officer of Conservancy.

It can be difficult for the Executive Director to approve expenses in a
timely manner if they themselves are traveling or taking time off. Allowing
any officer to approve the expenses helps us be more responsive with minimal
additional risk.

Travel: Add $150 to the limit on int'l airfare without preapproval.

The limit has been $1,500 since the first commit of the policy in 2012.
Inflation and other economic forces have brought us to the point that
international travelers routinely show us searches where the cheapest fare
is around or over $1,400. Increase the limit to try to level the number of
flights requiring preapproval.

Travel: The 90-day limit for expense reports is from the last day of travel.

This was always our intention. However, the previous wording didn't account
for gaps in the time that advance purchases (especially flights and other
long haul travel) are made and the time the travel actually occurs. This
updates the wording to match our intention.

Travel: Remove redundant sentence.

This is covered in the previous sentence, with "teh costs the Traveler
incurs are lower than this rate."

Travel: Move Additional Travel section up.

This puts it closer to the policies about booking transportation, where
readers are most likely to want it.

Travel: Remove note that requests are handled once per week.

This is still sort of our default handling, but things can move in both
directions depending on what else is going on. Just strike it.

Travel: Update information about rates we use.

* Introduce a "Rates" section that's referred to throughout.
* Explain how the total M&IE allowance is calculated.
* Update the info about currency conversions to explain we now use Open
Exchange Rates based on the date of the reimbursement request.

Travel: Reformat the policy as Markdown.

This should be more accessible than the previous asciidoc.

Travel: Wordsmith airfare search rules.

Mostly suggestions from Karen and Tony.

Travel: New formatting to specify wire information.

I hope this version is easier for readers to follow, by listing all
mandatory information first, followed by a single list of additional
information needed by country.

Fix some typos

Reviewed-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Brett Smith <brett@sfconservancy.org>

Outright reject requests after 90 days.

The "Board of Directors approval for 90 days late" rule was originally
instituted to make it clear that reimbursements beyond 90 days were
really difficult for Conservancy to process. In practice, the rule has
meant that travelers simply believe that they "have another out" if they
are late, and late reimbursement requests put an undue burden on
Conservancy staff for special processing, and they create extra work for
our volunteer Board of Directors.

As such, Conservancy now simply rejects reimbursement requests that are
received 90 days or more after the last day of travel.

More info on procedures for proposing change.

Also included is information about forks and removing our name.

Gitorious Apocalypse: Kallithea is now canonical

Conservancy's Kallithea instance is now the canonical location for the
Conservancy policies repository.

No policy change: update details for payment info.

This is not a change in policy and therefore does not need Board
approval. The change here merely changes details in collection for
payments.

Correspondent bank information requested.

In a conversation with our bankers, they told me that many non-USA banks
have correspondent banks in the USA they prefer to work with and it can
avoid fees.

Flight price search must be saved and submitted: now Clarified in main policy.

In the "Easy Reference Guide", it had been noted that you must include "Your
fare search (i.e., a screen shot)" when submitting a reimbursement request.
However, the main body of the text didn't explicitly say that.

I've also reintroduced herein a list of fare search sites. We took out the
list initially because some complained that it prescribed a specific search
site. The new wording herein makes it clear that the list is a proper subset
of acceptable search sites. More can be added if folks like.

Clarify PayPal option wording, and note currency information needed.

PayPal can handle mulitple currencies now. Therefore, we should collect
preferred currency ifnormation from the traveler, thus avoiding additional
round-trips to verify what currency they seek reimbursement.

Link to the list on PayPal's website of what currencies they support: some
travelers in the past have requested currencies via PayPal that it turned out
PayPal didn't support.

Clarify that Conservancy only reimburses room charges & that receipt must be clear.

The receipt for hotel rooms must clearly show the dates of travel, so
Conservancy can verify that the dates of the stay matches the dates of the
event attended, and also to verify that no food or service charges were
included, since food and service charges go against the ME&I per diem charges
rather than the hotel room charges.

Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0), Public Domain Dedication,
as downloaded from: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.txt

Note that conference-provided food may impact per diem rate.

Based on advice from Conservancy's Treasurer, Conservancy will not require
that conference-provided food be formally accounted for in per diem
reports. However, travelers should consider these issues when submitting,
and be honest about what they actually spent on food, rather than seeking
the maximum per diem allowed.

Clearly organize text to pre-approval required if Per-Diem Lodging rates exceeded.

Based on discussion with Conservancy's Treasurer, I reworked this section
to clearly state that Conservancy can approve higher rates for hotels, but
that such approval should be done before travel begins. I also cut down
some of the extra detail in this section that I think is obvious (i.e.,
how to use the GSA website).

Fixed URL changes.

Many changes.

Format converstion to asciidoc.

- edited "competitive bids" language to broaden scope from software developers to all "technical service contractors."
- made a few grammatical and wording changes to the section re: Community Members' (lack of) influence over a Project's technical direction

s/some/substantial/g because the real concern is a serious substantial
interest rather than a de minimus.

Fixed m-dash typo.

Be clear about what state and federal laws we mean.

cjl asked:
I believe it is important to be very specific about reimbursement for
travel as this is probably one of the moret common forms of financial
transactions in many projects. It would be unfortunate if PLC members
were made ineligible (or unduly burdened) in requesting travel funding
on an equal footing with other project members.

We've explicitly stated now that legitimate reimbursements are not
compensation.

Typo fix.

cjl raised this issue:

As a practical matter, this one is difficult may be difficult for
Sugar Labs to achieve (particularly, "permitted to hear") as our PLC
discussions are held in an open IRC forum and openness is a
philosophical position within our project. Can we narrow this
restriction for PLC members to "participate" while allowing
"hearing" on an equal footing with all project members?

This change reworks that section to allow for after-the-fact reading of
logs and/or minutes by the conflicted Person, but does not allow them to
attend the meeting except to disclose facts, etc.

cjl suggests that:
While "available bandwidth" is common enough jargon in our community,
perhaps this should be changed to "interest and availability".
We accepted the change since "bandwidth" is indeed jargon.

cjl from the Sugar Labs committee raised the following concern:

In theory, engagement in the proposal drafting process might allow a
conflicted person to "tip the scales", thereby justifying their
exclusion. However; in practice, it may be that the conflicted
person is the only PLC member with the requisite technical expertise
or situational awareness to draft a suitably detailed proposal. Is
it possible to acknowledge that the rest of the PLC should generally
be capable of taking advantage of the conflicted persons special
knowledge and contributions to the drafting without allowing the
creation of "an uneven playing field".

This change allows the conflicted PLC Person to "disclose material facts
and to respond to questions" to the drafting process, but does not allow
them to do the drafting themselves.

After discussion with Denver and Tony, we narrowed these sections to
"for-profit", since we decided that non-profit "competition" wasn't an
issue of direct concern in these scenarios.

Converted format from LaTeX to asciidoc

typo fixes.

mostly typo fixes. Added supporting material to board records.

A few formatting fixes.