[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again)

[Lemmer, Catherine]

I am in favor of a foundation and would be willing to work on a
committee to review the existing options and/or set up a new foundation.
In one of my past lives, I did a good deal of legal work for non-profits
doing exactly this--establishing 501(c)(3) corporations.  I would tend
to be counted among those that would find a stand alone Evergreen
foundation, rather than a joint Koha/Evergreen/all other open source
software, best way to proceed.   I simply believe that the market forces
that are involved do not make one universal foundation a possibility. 

Catherine 



-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
[mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of
Hyman, Ben EDUC:EX
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 11:10 PM
To: open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again)

I concur entirely with Dan (thanks for reviving this discussion Dan),
and would love to see the community celebrating the creation of just
such a Foundation at the conference in Grand Rapids. Perhaps that's
being unrealistic, but sooner is better, IMHO. I suppose Foundation
establishment should precede celebration...perhaps an exploratory work
group could be nominated by the community?

Ben Hyman
Manager, Library Policy & Technology
Public Library Services Branch, Ministry of Education, BC
Phone 250.387.4043 or Toll Free 800.663.7051
ben.hyman at gov.bc.ca <mailto:ben.hyman at gov.bc.ca> 
www.bced.gov.bc.ca/pls/ <http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/pls/> 

From: Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net>

Date: Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:22 PM

Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again)

To: Evergreen Discussion Group
<open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org>

There was a brief discussion shortly after the Evergreen Conference
about the possibility of setting up an Evergreen Software Foundation [1]
and most recently a proposal to set up a joint Koha + Evergreen
foundation (which is probably a function better served by something like
http://www.code4lib.org/ <http://www.code4lib.org/>  in any case).

I posted a response to George's blog post [2] about the difficulties
that the Koha community has undergone recently and their renewed effort
to establish a foundation, but in that context I would like to revive
the discussion about an Evergreen Software Foundation by suggesting that
if such an entity is formed, it should roughly have the following
responsibilities:

* Hold the trademarks, logos, and evergreen-ils.org/open-ils.org related
collateral in trust for the use of the community

* Extend the community's development capacity (for example, by funding
the creation of developer training tutorials and workshops, where
development should be defined broadly to include documentation,
usability, design, testing, etc)

* Coordinate joint funding for the development of new features

* Organize the Evergreen International Conferences

Further, I suggest that we would be foolish to turn down the Software
Freedom Conservancy's [3] offer to serve, for free, as the 501(c)(3) [4]
shell organization that would be able to hold the collateral and
financial assets in trust for the foundation, and would accept donations
to the foundation and maintain corporate records and file the tax return
(again, for free). It has been stated several times that "it's not that
hard to file the paperwork for a 501(c)(3)", but I would argue that an
advantage of the Software Freedom Conservancy is that it is a neutral
entity.

[1].
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.education.libraries.open-ils.general/1258
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.education.libraries.open-ils.general/1258
> 

[2]. http://www.parser.ca/z678/2009/09/16/koha-manoeuvres/
<http://www.parser.ca/z678/2009/09/16/koha-manoeuvres/> 

[3]. http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
<http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/>  - "As a fiscal sponsor for
FOSS projects, the Conservancy provides member projects with free
financial and administrative services, but does not involve itself with
technological and artistic decisions."

[4]. As a Canadian, I don't care about 501(c)(3) status because I get no
tax advantages from it.