Re: [gentoo-nfp] Section 4.1 Member Classes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 01:57 +0200, Luca Barbato wrote:
> William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> > Just to be more specific and clear wrt to community. I as a developer,
> > not a Trustee. I get all kinds of help from the Gentoo community.
> > Patches, bug fixes, pointing out mistakes/errors, providing
> > improvements. It's invaluable, and at times more help than I get from
> > fellow Gentoo developers. Which I have a couple open bugs, I can't get
> > any devs to help me with. The recent ones I needed help on that are
> > closed, the community/users/contributors came through on.
>
> That is completely unrelated about adding random people to the foundation.

No it's not because the foundation encompasses the community. Per
comments Daniel has made and others. Representing the community was the
foundations intention, but over time. As the foundation was neglected,
it seems that was never realized.

> > For some reason it seems like what happens with adults forgetting they
> > were kids. Developers seem to forget we were once users. We might one
> > day return to being users. So should those that do not wield developer
> > status not matter?
>
> They are quite important, but that is unrelated to the foundation.

In your opinion. Not in all or others.

> > Some of our longest contributing members to Gentoo Java, aren't devs,
> > nor will they ever be. They don't want to be. Some even have their own
> > overlays. So guess they should not have any say or input.
>
> You just told me that their input has been treasured by the java team,

Does it mean it was passed on to the council? Does it mean that if they
want me to do something I do? Does it mean I represent them and their
will?

> the fact they do not want to become developers while they are
> maintaining an overlay is something that should be addressed, but is
> completely off topic.

They don't want to deal with the BS of being a dev. Frankly I can't
blame them in the least.

> > There should not be this elitism with a divide between developers,
> > users, contributors, sponsors, etc. We are all together the Gentoo
> > community. Which the foundation as I understand it, was intended from
> > it's inception to represent.
>
> NO, the foundation is an US activity born to have people sponsoring us
> get tax cuts. At least that was the main idea.

Who's idea? Who created the foundation? Who handed things over to the
foundation? What was their intentions? That was surely not their plan.
If it was their plan, they would have filed 501c3, not 501c6. Which has
no provisions for write off.

Never has anyone ever legally been able to donate to and write off as a
charitable donation. Any amount to the Gentoo Foundation, ever. It's not
that type of legal entity.

> The other important activities would be make sure we do not lose out
> trademark but IIRC it isn't currently property of the foundation.

Since when? I guess you do not realize that Daniel did hand over the
trademark. This year. The last actions the previous board of Trustees
did was to see the trademark thing through. Granted we had a trademark
for a entity that did not exists legally. That's been corrected.

Once we create a document page. I will see about providing copies of all
the trademark stuff, and etc. Which the current board does not have the
originals to I do not believe.

But the Gentoo Foundation is now the holder of any associated
trademarks. That should be clear and known.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
amd64/Java/Trustees
Gentoo Foundation