>For i have heard the words of the prophet!
>AND HE IS HYPER!!!
Hallelujah!
>And verily, I have bitten into the apple of knowledge!
>AND IT WAS SWEET!
like sugar!
>And I have heard the call of the G.You.I
>AND IT DID CLICK!
darn! I accidentally disconnected my modem!
>And I was led into the garden of the DeskTop,
>far from the evil profits of dot e x e
>toward the land of HyperText
>
>AND IT WAS GOOD!
No, it was better!
>And there i did meet The Witness of The TeachText
>who did lead me away from the fowl pit of the abomination
>dot t x t
>and toward the promis'd lands of Res STAK WILD
And 32k text limits ... oh well :-)
>And the prophet did free my mind...
Did I mention I'm afraid to let my mind roam free of fear it won't come back?
>WOW, i have seen your site it is amazing and i am a bit
>in awe of you (leider mein deutsch ist nicht so gut... :-(
Macht nichts. Wo ist da eigentlich etwas deutsches? Oder meintest Du nur,
wenn wir deutsch sprechen? (For the others: is there something German on my
page?)
>Leider auch kenne ich nicht Mathias Kahlert, aber er ist
>bei mir fast �berArtig (All Powerful). Vielleicht sie kennen
>einander?
Infoworkshop, denke ich. Er macht, soweit ich weiss XCMDs und so. Nein,
ich kenne ihn nicht pers�nlich. (short: don't know him personally, guess
he's with InfoWorkshop)
>Ich werde sie helfen mit alle das quatsch von recht - ist nicht
>so schwer... Aber ich werde's auf englisch schreiben, und dann
>poste ich ihn....
Danke! Gut, einen Menschen hier zu haben, der das komplizierte
US-Rechtssystem kennt. (short: Good to have someone who knows US-law).
>Your organisation is probably considered a "partnership implied at law".
>A partnership is an unincorporated association of persons
>who agree to share ownership and control of a business.
>It can be profit or non profit.
OpenCard itself is intended to be non-profit. Most of the folks on this
list plan to actually make money with the "stacks" they create using
OpenCard. But as such, OC will just be a tool which we collectively build.
>The 'default value' for control of partnership is equal votes
>for all members. You can however have a super-majority
>or even decisions by certain persons only... IE you can
>'configure' your partnership exactly as you please.
This sounds great. We have a strong anti-majority-rule fraction here,
who'd prefer some other way of coming to decisions. Consensus should be our
first and foremost goal, and we should make majority votes etc. an option
that is only to be used when OC is in danger of being immobilized otherwise.
>The reason I recommend a partnership is PARTNERS OWE EACH OTHER
>A DUTY OF LOYALTY. Simply put, you can't screw over your partner.
>(unlike a corporation, where shareholders can).
There's one problem with this: I don't want any responsibilities to arise
from this. It would be a Bad Thing(tm) if I introduce a piece of code to OC
that adds a new feature and am then doomed the rest of my life to mainain
it. Any development on OC should happen voluntarily. Since most of us do
this in their spare time as a hobby, they can't afford to be responsible
for more than what is intentional damage.
>A corporation would be the other route. I advise against it
>because: 1) employees of the corporation owe little or no
>duty to each other - i.e. it is cut-throat. 2) corporations
>must be formally registered 3) registration costs money
>4) drafting the articles of incorporation, while only slightly
>more complicated than a partnership is more complex.
Since OC would ideally be created in an open collaboration, it might be a
problem to become a formal entity, as members might come and go. In a
worst-case scenario we'd have to split the group into organizational
*members* and non-members who just submit and support.
>A corporate form of business is only interesting if you are
>planning to use the 'OpenCard Consortium' or whatever you choose
>to name it, as a for profit entity, i.e. seeking loans and
>eventually going public.
Our only plan so far is compiling an "official" distribution which has
been tested and smoothened as a steady point that users can rely on better
than on some developer distributing a program based on the same sources. We
want to make sure people always know where OC can be obtained from and that
modified copies didn't come from us. That's why there's talk about
trademarking the name.
>That said, the advantage of a corp. is that in a partnership
>you can be held personally liable for the accidents caused
>by the other partners in the course of their business. Corporate
>shareholders are only liable for the amount they invest.
This is dangerous. I do not think it would be good to endanger people in
the collaboration like this. If someone else deletes our archive of source
code, it'd be good if he could be held liable, but if the whole partnership
can be held liable for a single person's mistakes I think it's not desired.
OpenCard will be provides "as is" since it's free. We will try to help
users as far as we can and wish to do, but we don't want to be held
reliable for lack of support or anything. No warranties whatsoever.
>If any of you have concerns over liability for accidents or debts
>of the partnership (which is why the rockefellers don't go bankrupt when the
>exxon valdez goes belly up), there is a special partnership called
>the limited partnership (a.k.a. LLC) which limits liability
>of the limited partners to the money they have invested. In
>principle, limited partners are 'silent' - i.e. they do not
>make business decisions, i.e. they are only investors.
>The relationship of control equal, unless otherwis
Is there something that offers full decision w/o full liability?
>Please determine who is going to be considered a partner,
>and who is going to be making decisions. Say we have a hundred
>authors, willing to do a little work and ten 'core fanatics'
>who really are willing to do everything and anything needed
>to make it work - well, it is logical that those ten be given
>the decision making authority but that all 110 have a property
>interest in the project.
So we're again at the "member" and "non-member" question?
>It is my preference that such a program be in the public
>domain, as i believe knowledge should be free. However,
>you could licence a free or shareware version 1.0 and then
>make 2.0 commercial. Not the path I desire, but there are
>ways to do so.
PD is what we had come to so far. We're more interested in ensuring it
stays PD. E.g. if we could somehow ensure changes are submitted to us
without scaring off potential co-workers, this would be great. I think the
worst-case example was that we wouldn't want BigCompany to just take our
program's sources, compile them with their company logo on it and get rich
on it.
But my personal opinion is that I wouldn't mind this, as long as the
original sources stay available for free, and BigCompany can't keep anyone
from using the original sources. There's also been talk about requiring
people to make the original sources available to anyone interested, resp.
to at least point to a place where they can be obtained, which I don't
dislike.
>1) conditions to be considered an OpenStack associate
>-i.e. minimum amount of labor required
This is hardly possible to determine. You can't measure quality, and you
certainly can't do it in hours. Since someone might just add one semicolon
to a file to fix a bug, but might have needed some ingenious research to
find this missing character, while someone else might take days to
implement a simple loop to clear 500 variables, we can't really determine
who's an associate and who isn't. Best we could do if this is required
would be to declare 3 or four core members to collect everything submitted
by associates.
>2) who is an associate
>3) who are the persons who will make decisions
Best-case this would be everyone.
>4) what % of majority is required for a decision.
Again, the anti-majority-rule fraction probably won't like this.
>5) the exact nature of the associations purpose - i.e.
>'to create a shareware authoring tool'
The objective is to create an authoring system in the image of HyperCard
due to its likely demise, and to make it publicly available and adapt it to
the current state of technology.
>- and all this info in as much detail as possible.
You'll find out that exactly this is the problem here. We're great at
pushing decisions off till a later time. E.g. When will we finally get to
vote on the "section leaders" now that the CGIs are ready.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.weblayout.com/witness
'The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere...'
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