Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo Council vs Umbrella Corp ?

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 3:47 PM William Hubbs <williamh@g.o> wrote:
>
> As a member of the council, I'll be the first to say I don't know
> anything about trustee functions. For me, the question is, do we want to
> control our own destiny as an organization or do we want to have another
> organization control it in some way? To be honest, I do not have that
> answer because I don't know how much control an umbrella organization
> would try to exert, and since they would control our purse strings, I
> don't know what the scope of control they would be able to exert is.
>

I certainly share the concern, though I also have concerns about our
own sustainability, and I'll note that some of that issue about purse
strings also applies with a separate Foundation, simply because the
distro are the Foundation are still separate entities, though
obviously we have a bit more control over the latter.

A lot of this stuff has been discussed on the -nfp and -project lists
extensively, so I won't rehash it all.

I will touch on one item - the cost of our current accountants.  I
wouldn't be surprised if it could be done less expensively, however
there are a few considerations here:

* We had to do a LOT of historical cleanup and so the level of
engagement of the accountants for the recent tax filings is probably
more than you'd normally expect.

* We tend to insist on using FOSS ledger formats which a lot of CPAs
probably don't want to deal with.

* With the huge compliance issues up until now the main emphasis was
getting it done right over getting it done inexpensively.  The issues
up until now are basically an existential threat, and we're sitting on
a lot of cash, so trying to save $1k and potentially losing access to
tens of thousands of dollars in the process due to legal issues isn't
wise.

* After the initial filings were caught up there was some discussion
around changing accountants to save money.  The thinking is that we
wanted to get a bit more traction/experience with getting things done
right before we start making changes.  The reality is that we have a
lot of money right now and while I agree with mgorny's concern that we
can't just assume we'll continue to have it, for the short term I
think the emphasis should be on figuring out the future state before
getting tied up with making the current state more efficient.  If the
long-term ends up being to keep the Foundation around then of course
making it more robust/efficient makes sense.

Finally, I'll share a personal opinion that I've already elaborated on
elsewhere.  I think the best thing we could do to secure our future is
to reduce our reliance on having money at all.  Plenty of projects get
by with nothing more than a github/gitlab/whatever cloud-based repo.
Certainly having our infra gives us more options, but it also makes us
more dependent on money, and with money comes all the red tape.
Aiming for a more cloud-based infra that anybody can clone/fork/etc
means that even if github shuts us down somebody just has to create a
new repo someplace else and do a push.  Commoditizing the infra and
investing our efforts into the actual distro seems like the better
strategy to be secure.  And if we want to host that stuff ourselves
that is ok too, but the key is that if somebody takes down our bug
tracker we have a dozen devs who are already keeping their own forks
of it based on publicly-accessible backups and one just has to make it
public to pick up without interruption.

Basically we need to think smaller, not bigger.  Stuff that involves
money should be a nice-to-have, not a must-have.

It isn't unlike achieving financial independence/security.  The most
efficient thing any individual can do to increase their personal
financial security is to reduce their recurring spending - you don't
need a strategy to generate income that is purely discretionary.

-- 
Rich