luc wrote:
Le jeudi 24 août 2006 à 22:30 +0200, Lourens Veen a écrit :
> On Thursday 24 August 2006 16:38, Terry Hancock wrote:
>> I think Timothy's bullet points are great. I can't really think
>> of any improvements on them.
>> Agreed, except that I would permute them a bit. [...]
>>
>> This way, the overarching goal is first, followed by more
>> specific activities that the OHF will undertake to achieve that
>> goal.
>>
>> Actually, looking at it again, "that makes various kinds of
>> decisions [with] regard to open hardware development strategy" is
>> rather vague. Can we work out a more precise description of what
>> we really mean here?
May be one should not be precise indeed. OHF will be tied to his
purpose, that is, if it's about hardware, it's not about software or
something else. Understand that, the more the purpose is precise, the
more anybody could tell us: "what are you doing here is out of your
purpose" Then, the best to write would be: "Act as an elected
community representative body about the open hardware development
strategy."
(BTW, luc, I hate to nitpick, but for future reference: an organization
can be "it", "they", or "we" in English, but never "he" or "she". It just
confuses me a lot when you say that -- I keep thinking "who is this
"he" he's talking about?" ;-) )
You are right that we need to stay open-ended, however, certain things
need to be clear. Anything to do with handling money is relevant to
the IRS, so you need to specifically say that you're a foundation and that
you intend to control certain money for people. So, going back over
what's been said:
"""
The Open Hardware Foundation will be organized as a elected
community representative body acting to promote the goals of
developing open source, fully specified hardware, including:
* Formulating strategy for open hardware development
* Developing, maintaining and publishing standards documentation
* Developing training materials and programs to encourage
the development of open hardware developers' skills
* Providing grants to subsidize the needs of specific hardware
development projects
"""
Note that by using the word "including" we eliminate the need to
be comprehensive (and that meets luc's point). Nevertheless we
mention all the sticky money issues. I've eliminated the specificity
of paying specifically for hardware tools in grants because you
never know if there might be something we're missing. We probably
don't want to pay salaries or other kinds of "needs", but that
could change in the future (it's not fundamental to the OHF idea).
I omit anything specific about fund-raising, because all NPOs
need to raise money, so they know that part. Even the informational
roles of the organization will need things like server rent and
maintenance. Unless you have really dedicated volunteers,
in fact, you're probably going to need to pay at least one part-time
salary for an IT guy (maybe not right away, though -- and I'm not
talking about me either, if nominated I will not get the Cheetos,
if elected I will not sysop.... ;-D ).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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