On Sun, 2015-02-01 at 22:46 +0100, Andrej Mitrovic via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: > On 2/1/15, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d-announce < > [email protected]> wrote: > > http://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2015H1 > > - Create the D Language Foundation > > What exactly is this idea about, can you elaborate a bit?
Given involvement with SCons (which used to have a foundation, but it seems to have lapsed, but we need it), and Groovy (never had one but almost certainly needs one now), I see three main issues: — A centralized organization supporting the distributed FOSS project, giving other organizations a generalized single point of contact. Also having an organization, not just a collection of individuals, given other organizations confidence in support, continuity and development. — A legally established foundation can be the holder of IP. It makes any debates about licencing, etc. easier if there is a single entity to deal with. Really though this is more to keep other organizations happy and confident. — A foundation can be a funds collection and redistribution entity. Again stuff can happen without a central "not for profit" organization, but it generates confidence in other organizations if there is one. Strong rather than small intermittent funded activity is more likely with a foundation than without. Then you get the questions of where (in which jurisdiction), and who are the "directors" and how do they get changed. There are many "off-the-shelf" organizational structures so it is "pick one". The problem of jurisdiction is more difficult these days. The usual knee-jerk reaction is "create a 'not for profit' in the USA". (Actually for D, like SCons, this is probably the most sensible start point; for Groovy it is far more difficult and less the right choice.) Unofficial legal opinion is that the USA government is currently very anti any new software language foundations. If true, that makes the Python Software Foundation model not viable. This would leave joining Eclipse or Apache (not really viable for D or SCons I suspect), or the Software Conservancy. A number of projects have gone this route, SCons is considering it since re-establishing a fully independent SCons Foundation is seeming an up-hill struggle. I am not a lawyer. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
