[gentoo-nfp] Re: Gentoo Linux Project / Gentoo Foundation

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

Joshua,

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 13:37 -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
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> On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:29:22 -0500
> "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@g.o> wrote:
>
> > I am on a fact finding mission about the SPI. We have discussed
> > turning things over to the SFC/SPI. We are unsure if we will resolve
> > things in house, or clean things up, and hand over to another.
> >
> > Either way we are going to clean things up before proceeding. Just
> > weighing out our options on proceeding from there. Many are in favor
> > of handing things over. Thus looking for information to reinforce
> > that.
>
> Well to give you a correlation. PostgreSQL (I am the PostgreSQL
> Liaison) was in the very same boat almost 2 years ago. We had a non
> profit application in the works that was stalled for various reasons.
>
> This was particularly bad timing for us because we were about to start
> the run up to our 10th Anniversary conference and we needed to be able
> to accept money in a non profit fashion.
>
> We handed it off to SPI and became an associated project. It has been
> very useful for us because it is extremely flexible.

Great thanks for that information as to your experiences and history.

>  You can be as
> involved or not involved as you like. As you can see, I chose to be
> involved because I believe that you must participate.

Also good to know. I think we might keep some trustees around or some
remains of our foundation after handing off the legal and accounting
aspects to the SPI. So we could make it a requirement that at least one
participates actively in the SPI on their board. Might be a council
member. Really not sure depends on if we keep some sort of a board of
trustees after the transition or not.

How did you all handle that at PostgreSQL? Did you have a board or
foundational body before?

> Basically by going with SPI you lose:
>
> 1. Paperwork.
> 2. Administrative crud.
> 3. 5% of your donations + whatever processing costs there are (like CC
> charges)

That's minimal fees for the work being done. Likely any normal service
would charge more. That was one concern with regard to the SFC. Was how
they funded themselves and kept things going. Their incentive. Granted
money isn't being made of this. There is still overhead. Having a %
built in like that. Means you all should have the financial resources to
deal with any project that starts to scale up.

> What you gain:
>
> 1. The ability to focus on your project
> 2. The ability to focus on your project
> 3. The ability to focus on your project

:)

> >
> > Anything we do with the SPI beyond gathering information would be a
> > long term proposition for the foreseeable future. We are not looking
> > to the SPI to help us clean up our present mess then move on. More
> > the other way around. Clean up mess, proceed with SPI or in house.
> >
>
> Great. I can tell you that I would love to have another rabid FOSS
> project as part of us. I have ran Gentoo in the past (and in fact was
> using your docs to figure out bluetooth on Ubuntu ;)) just last night.
>
> On a professional note, I believe to be truly successful you need to
> participate. It would be my hope that at a minimum your primary
> contributors would participate within SPI to help us continue to be
> successful.

I can surely see one or more of us participating in the SPI. Questions
there are:

     1. What would be the requirements for acceptance?
     2. Would we be considered?
     3. Do you all have a list or etc like the SFC provided of things we
        need to have in order before we could proceed?
     4. Anything else prior to the application process?

In order to apply, we will have to arrange a minimum a developer wide
vote. Usually takes 1/2 months there, but might be possible to expedite.
If we hunt each dev down and confirm they voted :)

However we would have to discuss the liaison position. Or any Gentoo
people that would sit on the SPI board. If trustees would remain, etc.

So possible more than one vote, but they might be able to take place
simultaneously. Vote for new trustees and vote for transition to SPI.

Thanks for the information and your time.

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