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

[Bart Decrem <bart eazel com>]

Chris,

Wonderful.  It's awesome to have you on board!

For the press release and the organization of the event, we have created a
separate, closed mailing list that includes the entire Gnome Steering Committee
and PR reps from Red Hat, Helix Code, Sun and Eazel.  It's tricky to get sign off
from everyone involved so I do think we need to keep that list closed and small,
but if there's someone here who's dying to get involved in those discussions, pls
let me know and I'll be happy to add you.

Chris: shall I add you to the press-release list as the VA contact, or is there
someone else I should add for that?

Bart

Chris DiBona wrote:

> You can release our name, I had the 10k cleared, then it was raised to 20.
> I'm clearing that right now. IT was sort of annoying getting two numbers
> so close together, but that's understandable.
>
> How is the press conference being handled? A problem with this kind of
> effort is if one company is seen to dominate, then everyone loses and the
> thing falls apart. But outside of stating obvious stuff, I'm glad to be
> here and hope I can help out. I'm curious as to how the press is being
> handled?
>
>  Chris
>
> --
> Linux Community Evangelist, VA Linux Systems            http://www.valinux.com
> President, Silicon Valley Linux Users Group               http://www.svlug.org
> Grant Chair, Linux International.                            http://www.li.org
> Co-editor, Open Sources                                  http://www.dibona.com
>
> On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Bart Decrem wrote:
>
> > Hi Owen,
> >
> > I initiated a private discussion about this among reps from initial corporate
> > members because, well, they have to agree to pay the membership fee, so we
> > have to  come up with something that'll be acceptable to them.  But now it's
> > time to open up the discussion, so here we are.
> >
> > I agree that the official step on that will be taken by the board of
> > directors, and it probably doesn't belong in the by-laws.  However, since
> > we're in the process of signing up initial members, we have to tell them how
> > much this will cost.  So we need some initial number.
> >
> > A number of people have suggested that the foundation should have an
> > executive director to handle the adminstrative tasks involved with moving
> > Gnome forward: set up meetings, deal with the advisory board, help set up
> > technical conferences, coordinate press releases etc.  So I have been
> > assuming that the foundation will need to raise approximately $100,000 per
> > year (a salary + overhead and some misc).  Based on that, and looking at the
> > list of likely corporate members of the advisory board, I came up with the
> > $0/$10k/$20k proposal.    I figure that will allow us to raise approximately
> > $120k.  At this point, it looks like all  the initial corporate members are
> > comfortable with this approach.
> >
> > Based on my experience helping get the foundation off the ground, and being
> > part of the Gnome community, I would say that it's not a bad idea to have one
> > paid staff person, but that's certainly not set in stone.  I'd love to hear
> > your, and others', opinion on this.
> >
> > BTW, at this point, it looks like initial corporate members of the Advisory
> > Board will be Sun, Red Hat, Helix Code, Eazel + at least 2 (more likely 3 or
> > 4) major PC OEMs.  We haven't received clearance yet to release those names
> > here.
> >
> > I do want to flag that we have private list with a group of PR people (which
> > also includes the Gnome steering committee) and the current proposal is to
> > have representatives from all the corporate advisory members on stage at the
> > press event, in addition to Gnome hackers.  So a big part of the announcement
> > on 8/15 would be to showcase major industry support for Gnome.  I want to
> > flag that here because a number of people have raised concerns about
> > corporate influence in the Gnome Foundation.  The corporate members would be
> > on the advisory board only, but it will be a terrific endorsement of the work
> > the Gnome hackers have been doing.  I think this is the right way to go, but
> > I'm sure a number of people will have concerns about this.  So let's talk
> > about that.
> >
> > Bart
> >
> >
> > Owen Taylor wrote:
> >
> > > 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
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > foundation-list@gnome.org
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
> >
> >
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