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: > On Thursday 23 April 2020 09:32:36 am Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote: > > 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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 :( > 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. > > > 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. > > 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. > > > > 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 ... > > - 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. > > > 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. > > 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. > 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
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
