Project Governance

[Ian Monroe]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Sven Krohlas <sven at asbest-online.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  finally we have an open discussion about this and I don't have to hear
>  that stuff second hand as I'm not always on irc.

Yea we have "closed discussions" about sending proposals to the list.
I'm sorry this was such a burden on you.

>  Some suggestions:
>
>  §6: let's define how long everyone has time to decide on the vote. Maybe
>  one week? So nearly everyone would be able to cast his ballot, even when
>  you're away for some time.
>  Maybe it would be possible to stop the vote earlier iff the result is
>  already clear from a mathematical point of view?

Well Greg's idea is to just have it done in IRC. I think this better
fits with our current consensus style of making decisions. Perhaps as
a backup if quorum can't be reached we could have it over email.

>  §2:
>  There was the idea to create an "e.V." ("registered voluntary association",
>  as KDE has one) in Germany to support Amarok.
>  Currently I'm about to find the steps that are necessary to create one
>  (well, that is easy) and how the articles of the association have to look
>  like so that we get accepted non-commercial by the finance office so
>  donations would be tax deductible (that's the hard part).

At least in the US being tax deductible is a large hassle and results
in a lot of extra oversight. Unless you're a Church of course ;).
Given our smallish budget and contributions, I don't think it would be
worth it, I honestly don't think many of our contributors are
disappointed they can't write off their contribution.

But perhaps we would need to be non-profit/e.V if at some point our
budget gets large enough that the Amarok Project would need to pay
taxes on money it raises. Obviously we don't want that. Could you
comment on this Greg?

>  Once we would agree on that I guess we have much less costs because of money
>  transfer as bank transfers inside the EU are completely for free.
>  I also think that this would lead to much more donations from Europe, as here
>  free software is very strong but only a few people use Paypal but everybody
>  does bank transfers.

I've asked HSBC about setting something up where we could have a
linked bank account on both sides of the Atlantic. It'd be ideal, but
this service might not actually exist (Greg was saying that
international banks like HSBC are sometimes just confederations of
local banks). But anyways we don't need to be incorporated to have a
bank account. Greg has a separate savings account for Amarok, we could
have something like this in Europe too (maybe, assuming they have
similar rules for unincorporated entities).

>  But, well, that's still in the state of an idea. Maybe in a few weeks I can
>  tell everyone more about it and afterwards we can decide if we want to do that.
>  But if anyone is really against creating an e.V. please stand up now so that
>  I don't waste my time. :)

Please look into incorporating in Europe, but look at the range of
corporation types, maybe e.V isn't the best for us. And regardless it
would be good for us to go ahead with these unincorporated rules,
since incorporation will likely take some time. And having existing
structure would probably help us to incorporate in the future.

Ian