SFC, GNOME Foundation (WAS Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011)

[Stormy Peters <stormy peters gmail com>]

Thanks, Brian, for the additional detail.

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com> wrote:

       * Orca / Software Freedom Conservancy
             o Discussions underway. The SFC is working to determine if it
               is possible for GNOME projects to join the SFC.
             o ACTION: Bastien will email Joanie about options about
               whether it makes sense for orca to consider being a
               FreeDesktop project.

What would be the advantage for GNOME projects to join the SFC? I
thought the GNOME Foundation provided all the services that SFC does.
(I'm not opposed to the idea, just would like to understand why the
projects want to.)

I think their website explains the benefits:

 http://sfconservancy.org/overview/
 http://sfconservancy.org/members/services/
 http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/

The main benefits seem to be that they will help your project take care
of finances/fundraising, and they also provide some protection against
liabilities.  The above website provides more details.

So far, we have just had some discussions with the folks at Conservancy
about whether it makes sense for GNOME projects to be a part of
Conservancy.  That said, it is not yet clear if the Conservancy will
accept GNOME projects.  We are waiting to find out from them if it is
even an option.

I believe that the orca project is interested in using Conservancy to
accept donations targeting the orca project.

There has been some discussion amongst the board about whether it might
make sense to allow people to make GNOME a11y donations via Friends of
GNOME or otherwise handle this within The GNOME community.  However,
some people (e.g. the marketing team) has concerns that if we open the
door to allowing specific GNOME subgroups or projects to receive
earmarked funds that this would or could spiral out of control, or make
FoG too complicated.

I think we should be willing to do for GNOME projects what the SFC does for their projects.

The money issue is probably a tracking issue more than anything else. We could mange that by limiting the number of projects. We could put criteria around what it means to be a project to ensure that it's a long lasting and well managed entity before we agreed to handle its finances. I know the SFC has a process for that.

We already manage funds for several projects, including a11y.

We could add a few things to make the process easier. Ideas (not necessarily good ones at this point) include creating a private wiki page for each project with accounting of their money so everyone is on the same page, creating a more public version of gnucash file, finding a private place we can check the gnucash file in so it doesn't have to be forwarded around, etc.

But, even if we supported receiving a11y funds via some GNOME Foundation
mechanism, I think Joanie is still interested in having orca join the
Conservancy if possible since she has indicated that she is very
interested in the liability protection that they offer.

There has been some discussion about whether The GNOME Foundation could
provide similar protections, but I believe that their liability
protection is possible because of the way their organization is
structured.  For example, they require that all project funds be
managed centrally by them.  I am not sure it would be practical or
possible for The GNOME Foundation to require this of all GNOME modules.

Would we have to do it for all GNOME modules or just the projects that had asked us to hold their money for them?

Stormy