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Joshua, |
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On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 13:37 -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote: |
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> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- |
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> Hash: SHA1 |
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> |
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> On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:29:22 -0500 |
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> "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@g.o> wrote: |
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> |
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> > I am on a fact finding mission about the SPI. We have discussed |
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> > turning things over to the SFC/SPI. We are unsure if we will resolve |
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> > things in house, or clean things up, and hand over to another. |
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> > |
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> > Either way we are going to clean things up before proceeding. Just |
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> > weighing out our options on proceeding from there. Many are in favor |
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> > of handing things over. Thus looking for information to reinforce |
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> > that. |
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> |
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> Well to give you a correlation. PostgreSQL (I am the PostgreSQL |
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> Liaison) was in the very same boat almost 2 years ago. We had a non |
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> profit application in the works that was stalled for various reasons. |
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> |
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> This was particularly bad timing for us because we were about to start |
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> the run up to our 10th Anniversary conference and we needed to be able |
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> to accept money in a non profit fashion. |
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> |
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> We handed it off to SPI and became an associated project. It has been |
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> very useful for us because it is extremely flexible. |
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Great thanks for that information as to your experiences and history. |
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> You can be as |
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> involved or not involved as you like. As you can see, I chose to be |
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> involved because I believe that you must participate. |
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Also good to know. I think we might keep some trustees around or some |
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remains of our foundation after handing off the legal and accounting |
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aspects to the SPI. So we could make it a requirement that at least one |
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participates actively in the SPI on their board. Might be a council |
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member. Really not sure depends on if we keep some sort of a board of |
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trustees after the transition or not. |
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How did you all handle that at PostgreSQL? Did you have a board or |
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foundational body before? |
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> Basically by going with SPI you lose: |
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> |
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> 1. Paperwork. |
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> 2. Administrative crud. |
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> 3. 5% of your donations + whatever processing costs there are (like CC |
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> charges) |
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|
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That's minimal fees for the work being done. Likely any normal service |
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would charge more. That was one concern with regard to the SFC. Was how |
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they funded themselves and kept things going. Their incentive. Granted |
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money isn't being made of this. There is still overhead. Having a % |
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built in like that. Means you all should have the financial resources to |
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deal with any project that starts to scale up. |
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> What you gain: |
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> |
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> 1. The ability to focus on your project |
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> 2. The ability to focus on your project |
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> 3. The ability to focus on your project |
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|
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:) |
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|
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> > |
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> > Anything we do with the SPI beyond gathering information would be a |
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> > long term proposition for the foreseeable future. We are not looking |
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> > to the SPI to help us clean up our present mess then move on. More |
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> > the other way around. Clean up mess, proceed with SPI or in house. |
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> > |
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> |
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> Great. I can tell you that I would love to have another rabid FOSS |
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> project as part of us. I have ran Gentoo in the past (and in fact was |
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> using your docs to figure out bluetooth on Ubuntu ;)) just last night. |
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> |
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> On a professional note, I believe to be truly successful you need to |
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> participate. It would be my hope that at a minimum your primary |
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> contributors would participate within SPI to help us continue to be |
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> successful. |
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I can surely see one or more of us participating in the SPI. Questions |
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there are: |
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1. What would be the requirements for acceptance? |
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2. Would we be considered? |
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3. Do you all have a list or etc like the SFC provided of things we |
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need to have in order before we could proceed? |
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4. Anything else prior to the application process? |
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In order to apply, we will have to arrange a minimum a developer wide |
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vote. Usually takes 1/2 months there, but might be possible to expedite. |
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If we hunt each dev down and confirm they voted :) |
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However we would have to discuss the liaison position. Or any Gentoo |
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people that would sit on the SPI board. If trustees would remain, etc. |
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So possible more than one vote, but they might be able to take place |
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simultaneously. Vote for new trustees and vote for transition to SPI. |
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Thanks for the information and your time. |
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-- |
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William L. Thomson Jr. |
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Gentoo/amd64/Java |