[Squeakfoundation]OK, what exactly should this SqueakFoundation thing be and do?

[Paul Fernhout]

Cees makes a great point and he obviously speaks from experience. (And
thanks for setting up this list).

Defining a purpose, and then outlining some agreed on principles (along
the lines of the Chaordic http://www.chaordic.org process) makes a lot
of sense to me rather than trying to raise funds (for what?) or
struggling to find or build a legal place to put them. 

I haven't been involved in forming a Chaordic organization but I have
read Dee Hock's book and think the ideas make a lot of sense. In
particular, I think these are good principles for almost any
organization:
  http://www.chaordic.org/what_princ.html

If we get to that point where we need funds handled or raised, there are
several non-profits that could host such efforts (Yet Another Society is
one and looks like a good choice from the web site), and there are also
other non-profit incubators that can take charitable projects under
their wings (Tides http://www.tides.org/ is one I have thought of using
for other reasons and contacted in the past). A stumbling block with
Tides was they wanted to own the copyright of everything (they pretty
much have to for reasons of maintaining non-profit status), or pass it
onto another non-profit forming from the effort. That's OK with me --
but it assumes they can be trusted to understand copyright issues (say
with writing licenses, where they either might not accept giving away
code or alternatively putting Squeak-like restrictions).

And, as Michael Phillips says in the book "The Seven Laws of Money",
what any effort needs is "supporters". With enough supporters, money for
what needs to be done is never a significant stumbling block.

A word on money -- when I proposed my doing a Business Squeak/Pro over a
year ago on the list if I could raise the money to support me, I got
within a couple of days several pledges totaling about $2000. I decided
not to proceed with taking people up on their offers, in part because I
was concerned about the impact on the community if I was paid to do
Squeak stuff and others were not. That could be demotivating to some
people out there otherwise happily Squeaking away and contributing in
their spare time because it might be felt unfair. Obviously, there are
people who are paid to do Squeak as part of their job at a non-Squeak
company, but I'm talking about specific community funded work.

That said, if we do raise money in the future, we may want it for
non-programming things like conferences, events, licensing something
cool to add to the system, or paying someone to do the less interesting
(to programmers) legal/secraterial work of making sure every Squeak
related contribution in any main distribution is nice-and-tidy legal
with a "wet" signature like FSF does. That is something that would make
Squeak more acceptable for business use because it would prove "due
diligence".  But I see those activities as in the future, after there
are supporters of a Squeak Foundation purpose.

I will start another thread called "Chaordic Purpose" in which I will
post a few purposes of other chaordic organizations as examples. Maybe
we can focus that thread on purpose and if people want to talk about
funding (or specific projects) it can continue in this thread or
another.

-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software 
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com

Cees de Groot wrote:
> 
> merlyn@stonehenge.com said:
> > I didn't get any feedback from the Sq list about having SqF be funded
> > as a committee under Yet Another Society (YetAnother.org), already
> > established as a 501-3-c with a compatible charter, and with a board
> > that has already expressed enthusiasm about having SqF participate.
> 
> That's because I'm a chaordic convert - I'd like to focus on goals first. It's
> a suggestion, and I think a useful suggestion, but I've probably lived too
> long in Germany: I like to take things in order :-).
> 
> --
> Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg@cdegroot.com>
> GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B