[kde-usa] KDE U.S. NPO

[Lydia Pintscher]

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 4:55 PM, Jeff Mitchell <mitchell at kde.org> wrote:
> On 5/10/2012 2:29 PM, Lydia Pintscher wrote:
>> Well that and things like how long it'd take roughly for requests to
>> be processed (extremely important for me personally as right now with
>> Claudia we have very direct influence on this which we'd likely lose).
>
> Experience shows that it's longer than they claim it will be. :-)

Hah Right. Which might become a real problem at KDE's scale. Or it
might not. Not sure.

>> What other benefits or drawbacks would there be?
>
> That's a very broad question. Pertaining to what, specifically?

Nothing specific. Whatever you can all think of really.

>> What would be the
>> requirements imposed on us in terms of new rules beyond the ones we
>> already have to adhere to?
>
> Those are listed in the bylaws and project pages...

Right. It'd be good to have these collected and spelled out I think.

>> What would be the relation of this entity
>> to KDE eV? I have a more or less clear idea on this for Conservancy
>> through Amarok of course but that's it. The other board members don't
>> have that.
>
> Several of them *should* have it, since they were instrumental in making
> the desired relationship quite clear to the SFC. Before your time, but
> still...

Fair enough.

>> In terms of what I'd love to see in a proposal: All of the above
>> questions answered. Ideally comparing the 2 or 3 choices we might
>> have. This is quite some work but it'd make a quick decision by the
>> board much more likely and easy.
>
> I still don't quite see what the issue is here and how putting together
> a comparison is really going to help. The two are more alike than
> different and essentially differ only in fees imposed and level of legal
> protection that they offer. This has been discussed endlessly with the
> Board/Claudia/Brad/Karen for years now. Getting answers to the questions
> above are nice, but in the end the same tradeoff is going to come up,
> and the Board is still going to have to make a decision on the same
> patent protection vs. fee debate that they've been stalled on since at
> least August and really longer.

Ok if the conclusion is that they are pretty much alike except for x
and y then that is a conclusion I am happy with. I have personally not
looked into SPI for example at all so can't say.
The other thing is that the decision imho isn't just about going with
either of SPI or Conservancy. The option of neither is still on the
table, no?
As for the patent vs. fee debate: Get me a proposal that reflects what
you all have been talking about and think is the right thing to do.
Then I'll help push this through in the board. But to do that I need a
concrete written down proposal I fear.

>> You mean on the patent stuff? I am not sure this is the thing we
>> should base this decision on tbh.
>
> According to Brad Kuhn, it's the only real difference between them. As a
> result, I don't know what else you *would* base the decision on. (He'll
> probably also tell you that the SFC has an actual full-time employee
> (him) to take care of things, but in practice this hasn't made them speedy.)

Fair enough. As I said above I have not looked into SPI in detail previously.
Would the legal setup for KDE e.V. be similar to what we have for
Amarok with the Conservancy?


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE Community Working Group / KDE e.V. board member
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org