I concur--the larger stakeholders may have competing interests and all of those interests might as well be represented at the discussion table on teh front end. Catherine
________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Lori Ayre Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 11:04 AM To: Evergreen Discussion Group Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again) That's great Elizabeth. I think the community would like to hear more and, more importantly, learn how they can get involved. I think it would be prudent to have representatives from several Evergreen projects involved in the formation of any foundation. Lori On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 6:44 AM, McKinney, Elizabeth <[email protected]> wrote: The Georgia Public Library Service is currently working towards forming a foundation to which the licenses and trademarks for Evergreen can be transferred. After the Evergreen conference we identified a viable avenue for forming a foundation, and we have jumped at the opportunity. There is nothing further to report at this moment. We will keep everyone in the loop as this develops. We are very happy to see interest from the community. Elizabeth McKinney PINES Program Director Georgia Public Library Service A Unit of the University System of Georgia 1800 Century Place, Suite 150 Atlanta GA 30345 404.235.7141 [email protected] http://www.georgialibraries.org/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Catherine Lemmer" <[email protected]> To: "Evergreen Discussion Group" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 9:35:44 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again) I am in favor of a foundation and would be willing to work on a committee to review the existing options and/or set up a new foundation. In one of my past lives, I did a good deal of legal work for non-profits doing exactly this--establishing 501(c)(3) corporations. I would tend to be counted among those that would find a stand alone Evergreen foundation, rather than a joint Koha/Evergreen/all other open source software, best way to proceed. I simply believe that the market forces that are involved do not make one universal foundation a possibility. Catherine -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Hyman, Ben EDUC:EX Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 11:10 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again) I concur entirely with Dan (thanks for reviving this discussion Dan), and would love to see the community celebrating the creation of just such a Foundation at the conference in Grand Rapids. Perhaps that's being unrealistic, but sooner is better, IMHO. I suppose Foundation establishment should precede celebration...perhaps an exploratory work group could be nominated by the community? Ben Hyman Manager, Library Policy & Technology Public Library Services Branch, Ministry of Education, BC Phone 250.387.4043 or Toll Free 800.663.7051 [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> www.bced.gov.bc.ca/pls/ <http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/pls/> From: Dan Scott <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:22 PM Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen foundation (again) To: Evergreen Discussion Group <[email protected]> There was a brief discussion shortly after the Evergreen Conference about the possibility of setting up an Evergreen Software Foundation [1] and most recently a proposal to set up a joint Koha + Evergreen foundation (which is probably a function better served by something like http://www.code4lib.org/ <http://www.code4lib.org/> in any case). I posted a response to George's blog post [2] about the difficulties that the Koha community has undergone recently and their renewed effort to establish a foundation, but in that context I would like to revive the discussion about an Evergreen Software Foundation by suggesting that if such an entity is formed, it should roughly have the following responsibilities: * Hold the trademarks, logos, and evergreen-ils.org/open-ils.org related collateral in trust for the use of the community * Extend the community's development capacity (for example, by funding the creation of developer training tutorials and workshops, where development should be defined broadly to include documentation, usability, design, testing, etc) * Coordinate joint funding for the development of new features * Organize the Evergreen International Conferences Further, I suggest that we would be foolish to turn down the Software Freedom Conservancy's [3] offer to serve, for free, as the 501(c)(3) [4] shell organization that would be able to hold the collateral and financial assets in trust for the foundation, and would accept donations to the foundation and maintain corporate records and file the tax return (again, for free). It has been stated several times that "it's not that hard to file the paperwork for a 501(c)(3)", but I would argue that an advantage of the Software Freedom Conservancy is that it is a neutral entity. [1]. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.education.libraries.open-ils.general/1258 <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.education.libraries.open-ils.general/1258 > [2]. http://www.parser.ca/z678/2009/09/16/koha-manoeuvres/ <http://www.parser.ca/z678/2009/09/16/koha-manoeuvres/> [3]. http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/ <http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/> - "As a fiscal sponsor for FOSS projects, the Conservancy provides member projects with free financial and administrative services, but does not involve itself with technological and artistic decisions." [4]. As a Canadian, I don't care about 501(c)(3) status because I get no tax advantages from it.
