[Evergreen-governance-l] ***SPAM*** Link to Evergreen Governance: Formal Structure sub-committee page

[Dan Scott]

I seem to have conflated "Governance structure" and "Formal
organization" nicely with the "Formal Structure sub-comittee" title,
hopefully that's okay.

Here's a link to the wiki page I created, inside the "governance"
namespace: http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=governance:structure

Right now it's very bare, just links to a few resources of interest.

BTW, in discussing the nature of the Software Freedom Conservancy with
its president, Bradley Kuhn, a few minutes ago, he took pains to
emphasize that the conservancy is not a pass-through organization; to
quote:

<bkuhn> Well, to be clear, Conservancy is *not* a pass-through org.
<bkuhn> pass-through usually means there is little to no oversight to
how money is spent by the project.
<bkuhn> Conservancy is actively involved in oversight and making sure
the funds are being spent to advance its non-profit mission -- in
close and constant collaboration with project's software development
leaders, of course.

Also:

<bkuhn> Conservancy doesn't mind if projects are investigating inc'ing
themselves while applying in parallel.  In fact, for bigger projects,
we downright encourage it.
<bkuhn> oh, and note to your colleagues that they are welcome to apply
and then turn us down.  It happens often, and we don't mind.  It's not
that much work to process an application, although it does take some
time.
<bkuhn> (but the time is just queuing to the next board of directors
meeting, not actual work-time for us)

That said, given the experience that most US libraries have in
creating 501(c) structures, he understands that the effort in
incorporating and having a board of directors, a treasurer, a
secretary, etc. might not be as daunting for libraries as it is for
random software development organizations who don't have that
experience. And whether or not we decided to join the Conservancy, the
Software Freedom Law Center would still be available to assist us with
legal issues related to free / open-source software.