Re: Membership dues [ was: Re: Advisory Board Letter ]

[Robert Humphreys <rob collab net>]

Owen, thanks for your feedback. You make many excellent points below.

Owen Taylor wrote:
- $10,000 or $20,000 doesn't seem to jibe with making the
  advisory board "open". These aren't huge amounts of
  money, but I think it is certainly large enough to act
  as a discouraging factor to some companies.

This is subject to change. However, as Bart pointed out, we had to arrive at
some number
in order to get funding from the companies that wish to join the Foundation.
Also, we have inserted a clause that allows the board to make exceptions (e.g.
start up Foo has no money right now, but some of its employees have been
active and valuable contributors to GNOME, and they want to create application
X that will build off.........) They could be allowed to join with out having
to pay any dues.





> Robert Humphreys <rob@collab.net> writes:
>
> > Corporate members with more than ten full time employees will pay
> > $20,000 a year for membership dues, and companies with less than ten
> > full time employees will pay $10,000 a year for membership dues. Special
> > considerations for non profit organizations, early stage start ups, etc.
> > can be made and are subject to approval by the Board of Directors.
>
> I've been told there been some discussion of the membership dues
> in private email, but so far I've not seen any public discussion,
> so I wanted to bring it up here.
>
> I have several concerns here:
>
> - Who decides (decided???) the fees? This would either be
>   part of the bylaws, or decided by the elected board of
>   directors.
>
>   I don't think hard-coding it into the bylaws is a good
>   idea, and the board of directors has not been elected
>   yet...
>
> - $10,000 or $20,000 doesn't seem to jibe with making the
>   advisory board "open". These aren't huge amounts of
>   money, but I think it is certainly large enough to act
>   as a discouraging factor to some companies.
>
> - Do we need a foundation with this much funding? One thing
>   I think we're all agreed on is that we don't want this
>   to become the OSF ... we won't be doing development, we
>   don't need a management structure, etc.
>
>   I think, in general, accountability, responsiveness, and
>   "community spirit" are going to be a lot higher if member
>   companies donate marketing, infrastructure, etc, resources
>   rather than donating money and trying to build those
>   up at the foundation.
>
>   (Clearly, the proposed membership dues are not big enough
>   to become a new OSF - but I think they are possibly big
>   enough to get in the way of lean, mean, thin, flexible
>   foundation.)
>
> Regards,
>                                         Owen
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-list mailing list
> foundation-list@gnome.org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list

--
Regards,

Rob

Rob Humphreys | Collab.Net | 415.908.1241 direct | 415.596.9021 cell
rob@collab.net | open source changes everything | www.collab.net