On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 11:35:43 -0800 Bryce Harrington <br...@osg.samsung.com> wrote: > > In practice, with both organizations, I've seen healthy interactions > between their staff and general members of the projects. The liaison > tends to be more of a facilitator of discussions than a bottleneck, in > my experience. > > > http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/
It was this aspect of the SPI that caused concern regarding liason "The Liaison is the person from the project to whom the Board listens for all authoritative decisions regarding project assets, fundraising, expenses and disposition. While the Board is happy to talk to other members of the project, only the Liaison will be able to send any instructions regarding funds or assets, unless they delegate someone else." Just seemed like all decisions had to flow through one person. It seem to be of concern for others. Though not really any different than having a single Treasurer, which tends to be the case for most all. > Perhaps. Honestly I think the paid staffing of SFC is making a > difference. Financial transactions are both voluminous and dull work, > so I can easily imagine it being difficult to tap volunteer labor to > handle it. Paid staff is IMHO also making the difference for FreeBSD. That would also apply to E/EFL to pay for some critical things someday... ideally! Like some $700k went to paying for human labor in some form or another https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Budget2016.pdf IMHO paid staff would also make a difference for Gentoo. It was my plan long ago before I was a trustee https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-nfp/message/714f1fded6f06a6a474abcbef5358cb9 When I was a Trustee. https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-nfp/message/e3825ceed1a9eabb4d1438e919bdc63a I also mentioned it again recently. https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/4a0f7f2d4cdc15f94549194c045d281f Others got there way, I did not, and Gentoo went no where as a result... No conferences, no paid development beyond Google Summer of Code, etc. > yet there's some chance the organization could at least provide > advice, and might even lend a hand with some of it. I wouldn't > consider a mess being a reason to not join, but instead look beyond > those and focus on if in general the organization would bring > benefits that would improve your project. It depends on the mess. Gentoo is a unique situation and mess. In short the IRS requires you to do filings to be a non profit. Gentoo never has done that. Which means its subject to being taxed as for profit, and a huge mess to get it back to being a non profit. If the IRS will even allow such. To become a 501c3, charitable organization. You must pass a 5 year probation period. Gentoo failed that several times over. Not sure how the IRS will see that. I still have never got a answer to the question on ownership. Someone owns a for profit. A non profit has no owner. If a non profit fails to file and IRS converts back to for profit. Who owns that entity? I have a relative high up at Deloitte, and not sure even Deloitte could easily clean up Gentoo's mess. Ideally its done so taxes are never paid, but that is not trivial. Thus far I am not sure the IRS will talk to anyone, because no one seems to know who was on file when the foundation was first created. Who has the authority to talk to the IRS and who the IRS will recognized. Gentoo has hired an CPA, and even with them. I am not confident that mess will get cleaned up. Its really really bad!!! Neglected for way longer than it should. Driving away those with ability to address such things... I do not see any of that being an issue for E/EFL. First off there is no US entity. So it would be starting from scratch, no mess really. Short of driving away those who could help to facilitate such.... > However, it definitely would be a good idea to identify a few persons > with sturdy constitutions to be available to work on transition > related issues. It can be a very time consuming and harrowing > adventure, but at least there is gold to be won at the end. :-) I spent a tremendous amount of time as a Gentoo Foundation Trustee handling foundation restatement with New Mexico, getting a bank account, public by laws review, and other stuff. Far more time than I ever put into Gentoo development. I spent almost 2 years as a Gentoo Developer and less than 6 months as a trustee. Most have no appreciation for the time it takes to make such things happen. It is a very thankless job. I was never thanked in Gentoo, if anything received the opposite and still do. Not always is such reward or gold at the end. But if others had not gotten in my way and helped out. Gentoo could be close to where FreeBSD is at. Instead Gentoo is no where, and going the opposite direction. Lessons still not learned.... After all my hard work, stepping down from board of Trustees, I just got banned, and retired as a developer, never any thanks.... https://bugs.gentoo.org/135927#c5 It does not surprise me about Gentoo's mess still exist. Nor others not wanting to help clean up the mess.... Another good lesson to learn! Drive those away who can get something done. You run the risk of no one else ever showing who can do that. Thus it never gets done... Not just financial also technical. I replaced all Java on Gentoo in my overlay.... It has full support for Java 10, and Gentoo still has Java 9 masked and no one working on making anything better. No one is showing in years to change that... Proves my previous point again. -- William L. Thomson Jr.
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