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