On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 11:01 PM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gomm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, > > Thanks Nathaniel and everyone else who contributed for pushing forward > with formalizing Numpy governance and with this FSA. I'm quite excited > about both! > > Before I start commenting on the FSA, I'd like to point out that I'm both > on the numpy steering committee and the NumFOCUS board. I don't see that as > a problem for being involved in the discussions or signing the FSA, however > I will obviously abstain from voting or (non-)consenting in case of a > possible conflict of interest. > > > On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 7:57 AM, Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> Now that the governance document is in place, we need to get our legal >> ducks in a row by signing a fiscal sponsorship agreement with >> NumFOCUS. >> >> The basic idea here is that there are times when you really need some >> kind of corporation to represent the project -- the legal system for >> better or worse does not understand "a bunch of folks on a mailing >> list" as a legal entity capable of accepting donations, > > > Additional clarification: NumFOCUS is a 501(c)3 organization, which means > that in the US donations that are tax-deductable can be made to it (and > hence to Numpy after this FSA is signed). From European or other countries > donations can be made, but they won't be deductable. > > >> or holding >> funds or other assets like domain names. The obvious solution is to >> incorporate a company to represent the project -- but incorporating a >> company involves lots of super-annoying paperwork. (Like, *super* >> annoying.) So a standard trick is that a single non-profit corporation >> acts as an umbrella organization providing these services to multiple >> projects at once, and this is called "fiscal sponsorship". You can >> read more about it here: >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship >> >> NumFOCUS's standard comprehensive FSA agreement can be seen here: >> >> >> https://docs.google.com/document/d/11YqMX9UrgfCSgiQEUzmOFyg6Ku-vED6gMxhO6J9lCgg/edit?usp=sharing > > > There's one upcoming change to this FSA: the overhead percentage (now > 4-7%) charged will go up significantly, to around 10-15%. Re4ason: NumFOCUS > cannot cover its admin/legal costs as well as support its projects based on > what the doc says now. This is still at the lower end of the scale for > non-profits, and universities typically charge way more on grants. So I > don't see any issue here, but it's good to know now rather than right after > we sign. > > >> and we have the option of negotiating changes if there's anything we >> don't like. >> >> They also have a FAQ: >> >> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zdXp07dLvkbqBrDsw96P6mkqxnWzKJuM-1f4408I6Qs/edit?usp=sharing >> >> I've read through the document and didn't see anything that bothered >> me, except that I'm not quite sure how to make the split between the >> steering council and numfocus subcommittee that we have in our >> governance model sync up with their language about the "leadership >> body", and in particular the language in section 10 about simple >> majority votes. So I've queried them about that already. >> > > I'd like to clarify that the Numfocus subcommittee is only meant to > facility interaction with NumFOCUS and to ensure that if funds are spent, > they are spent in a way consistent with the mission and non-profit nature > of NumFOCUS. The same applies to possible legal impacts of decisions made > in the Numpy project. > > Regarding the question about the "simple majority votes" language, we can > simply replace that with the appropriate text describing how decisions are > made in the Numpy project. > Hi all, there wasn't much feedback on this FSA, but I want to point out that it's actually quite important for the project. Maybe everyone already thought about this when the governance model was agreed on (it does include a NumFOCUS subcommittee after all), but if not: read / think /ask question fast, because we're moving forward with signing of the agreement with the people listed at http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-dev/dev/governance/people.html#numfocus-subcommittee. Cheers, Ralf
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