24 Apr
2020
24 Apr
'20
12:26 a.m.
Hi all,
although I hoped that we would not be able to continue this discussion
until after the release of R14.0.8, it is obvious that this topic is
definitely important :)
On Thursday 23 of April 2020 17:47:56 Michael wrote:
I’m a US citizen and I’d heavily recommend to not do [TDE-ORG] in the
USA. Rules and regulations are excessive and expensive to comply with.
- Back pay? Figure out how much work has been done by who (number of
commits?), how much it’s worth, what a total for all of that would be,
and set aside [~25%?] of future donations to pay it off.
As long as we all agree, pretty much anything.
Great, ideas are welcome. It will be good if we have an ideas of what needs
to be done / we will be able to do.
In any case, my idea is that it would be best if we did not have to deal
with the necessary legal side of the project and bookkeeping. And it seems
that there could be solutions that could suit our needs. I will return to
this below.
I’d suggest anyone interested in wanting to donate their time to doing
the paperwork/bookkeeping do what Nik did and outlined their local
requirements so we can talk it out and decide what/where makes the most
sense for [TDE-ORG]. The world is a pretty small place now, so unless
someone has an objection, anywhere that is cheap/easy seems ideal.
# # #
On a negative example note, the [TDE-ORG] bylaws/charter/TOS ‘stuff’
probably needs a constraint so the project doesn’t do a ‘Drupal’ where
the Drupal Association literally dumped and ejected all the historical
user base in favor of the top corporate donors. Based on that, I’d
personally be somewhat against a ‘à la Red Hat’ model. *
I would find it ideal that we do not have to deal with legal issues and
bookkeeping, we do not have to focus on generating profit, but we can
simply focus on working as a TDE team and making TDE better and better.
Instead of an organization that someone could buy and decide on goals
against the project's intentions, so that there could be a TDE team
working on the goals we set ourselves.
On Thursday 23 April 2020 09:32:36 am Dr. Nikolaus
Klepp wrote:
In a side e-mail in this thread, I mentioned that Tim and I had agreed to
hand over the role of leader. Of course, Tim deserves the position of
honorary chairman or some such honor. But because he is very busy with
other projects, it is usually difficult to meet him. Therefore, we should
not bind him to the roles in which his decisions will be needed. At the
same time, I try not to make things dependent on me alone.
Anno domini 2020 Thu, 23 Apr 09:59:00 -0400
E. Liddell scripsit:
> On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 21:46:20 -0500
>
> Michael <mb_trinity_desktop(a)inet-design.com> wrote:
> > Probably the best way with Tim 'owning' the non-profit.
>
> In theory, we should probably incorporate, but this introduces
> accounting and tax-reporting requirements we haven't had to deal
> with up to this point. Still, we should move away from any single
> person being solely responsible for managing funds and
> resources—that's why we have a problem in the first place.
Unless Timothy (Tim?, what’s he like to be called by?) completely
declines he should be the titular head, even if he never does anything
else with TDE. Others elected/appointed can ‘do the work’ so to speak.
Okay, my opinion, otherwise it’d be insanely rude to Timothy :(
There are likely to be advantages and
disadvantages to setting up in each jurisdiction. And the US is not
a single jurisdiction: each state is different.
From my experience: US jurisdiction is something you should stay away
as far you can. So, what
would the money the Trinity Desktop Environment Project,
Inc. acquires be paid out for?
-hosting
-having someone do the accounting and make required corporate
reports -publicity and outreach?
-salary for one or more full-time devs, if we were to grow that
much? -other?
- Fond raising
- PR work ... And sources of income would be . . .
-donations
-sales of swag (shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, mouse pads . .
.) -technical support of TDE in larger deployments, à la Red Hat?
-paid feature requests?
- EU project funds
- local project funds
And the next step would be research of the rules
governing
not-for-profits in the jurisdictions of people actually willing to
do the *work* associated with ...
I can only speak for the Austrian situation
Done that already for :) statistically every Austrian is member of at
least 2 associations. Best All,
Michael
* Besides which I just had to build three CentOS 7 servers with systemd
and that thing is one piece of crap. So big middle finger to Red Hat
for shoving that down peoples’ throats.
I was previously interested in the fact that there could be companies /
associations that provide legal services and bookkeeping for open source
projects, because we are certainly not the only ones who need something
like this.
That's why I was very interested to see that Gitea, which we use as a
platform for developer collaboration, uses Open Collective - see
https://opencollective.com/gitea/
After an initial survey, it seems to me that Open Collective could suit our
needs. This could provide transparent bookkeeping and legal status for us
without interfering with our activities, our decisions and our goals.
Since I'm definitely not omniscient and I'd like us to make decisions as a
team, please, if you have bookkeeping and legal knowledge, you can take a
closer look at Open Collective.
I look forward to your feedback, comments and ideas.
Cheers
--
Slávek