On Fri, 2004-02-13 at 15:19, Tim Churches wrote: > Herewith the current state of affairs, with apologies for cross-posting: > > a) Some time ago (late 2002, early 2003?) a motion was put to the > Openhealth list that OSHCA should seek incorporation as a non-profit > organisation. The rationale was that organising the annual OSHCA > conference would be much easier if there were a formal entity to hold > (audited) funds etc, and that OSHCA could also participate as a > non-governmental organisation in various UN or other fora. A vote was > held and the motion passed.
In actuality this discussion took place on the OSHCA list and the OSHCA-work list beginning the the Autumn of 2001. The archives of the OSHCA list from about 14 OCT are available on the LinuxMedNews site. Prior to this the OSHCA list was maintained by www.sistema.it A brief history of the OSHCA concept (including prior to the actual name OSHCA is here: http://tinyurl.com/2mj4t and included below for those that are not officially registered OSHCA members. You will recall that to be on the OSHCA mailing list after the move to the linuxmednews site you had to acknowledge acceptance of the charter that was drafted in stages and voted on by the community. > b) An interim Board of Directors of OSHCA, with members spread over > nearly all the continents, was proposed as a means of bootstrapping the > incorporation process. In the absence of objections, the interim board > comprising Molly Cheah, Wayne Wilson, Adrian Midgley, Tim Cook, Joseph > dal Molin and myself (Tim Churches) convened and began work on > incorporation. Tim Cook subsequently resigned from the interim board. This took place in the Summer and early fall of 2002 during preparations for the OSHCA meeting in Los Angles. The agreement with Brian Bray at that time was that OSHCA would be incorporated by the end of 2002 and the transfer of all intellectual property held in trust would occur at that time. Dan Johnson volunteered (in August and reiterated at OSHCA2002) to effect the incorporation in the US. But Joseph DalMolin and others objected to OSHCA being incorporated in the US for political reasons such as possible collaboration in countries that the US doesn't trade with, specifically mentioned was Cuba. So Joseph accepted the task to incorporate OSHCA in Canada. > c) After more than a few false starts and some regrettable but I hope > forgivable inefficiency and delays (we all have day jobs...), all the > necessary paperwork to incorporate as a non-profit in Canada has been > submitted and the necessary fees have been paid - in November or early > Dec 2003. We are now waiting on the Canadian government to process the > application. Usual turn-around is supposed to be 6-8 weeks, so a > response should be imminent. I applaud the fact that this will finally occur and I look forward to OSHCA becoming the organization that we all dreamed of in 1999. But the "we all have day jobs" thing is disingenuous. As adults we (should) know what our commitments and limitations are. When we say something we should mean it and stand behind it. > d) Members of OSHCA will then be invited to register (there was never > any registration process formerly). Not so....specifically the archives show that there was a formal process to review, acknowledge and accept the charter prior to becoming an OSHCA member. Do you mean you need more information on members such as name, address, phone number? > e) As soon as a reasonable interval has elapsed to allow for > registration of OSHCA members, democratic elections for a Board of > Directors and other office bearers will be held, with all registered > OSHCA members enfranchised to vote. Great. > f) My understanding is that Brian Bray of Minoru Corporation, which > currently holds the oshca.org domain name, has agreed to transfer it to > OSHCA as soon as OSHCA is registered as a formal entity. Reasonably, he > does not want to transfer ownership of the name to an individual. True. But he did stipulate that the transfer needed to be effected by 31 DEC 2002. Does any one have an official position from him since then? > g) The domain name oshca.net is currently registered to Molly Cheah, and > she has also agreed to transfer ownership of it to OSHCA as soon as > OSHCA is incorporated. > > > With the OSHCA.Net vs. OSHCA.Org fragmentation unresolved, I think it > > would be wise for us to avoid association with OSHCA.Net or OSHCA.Org. Dan > > Johnson already offered to pay $10/year to register a new domain for our > > new List. Please let's keep OpenHealth away from the entangled OSHCA mess. > The above comment by Andrew baffled me. How is introducing yet another domain name going to reduce fragmentation? > I don't think that the issue of oshca.org, which is likely to be > resolved shortly as explained above, is a reason to register another > name for the successor to the Openhealth list. Note that Minoru > Corporation holds a trade mark on the Openhealth name, and we are > currently unable to ascertain whether Minoru would be willing to > transfer that trade mark to OSHCA. Hence, it is probably better to avoid > the use of the openhealth name for a successor list. Please note that according to the archives, Minoru also holds trademark on the name and text logo "OSHCA" and possibly on "Open Source Health Care Alliance". I think someone that is able to contact Brian and get a response should discuss his intentions. I tried recently to email him just as a personal note and did not receive a response. > I still favour [EMAIL PROTECTED] (and later, hopefully, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] as an alias) as the name for the new list. So far > most of the reactions to this on the oh-discuss list have been > favourable, but as Molly pointed out, we need to wait for the sun to > rise at least once in all timezones before making a decision. She is of course correct and I apologize for not making it obvious that I was being flippant in my comment that prompted this. I think she actually suggested two days so that it would allow for day off / busy schedules. ??? Cheers, -- Tim Cook, President, Open Paradigms, LLC Organizing Chair, AMIA Open Source Working Group Public Key at: http://www.openparadigms.com/timcook_publickey.asc Key fingerprint = C7BB 675B BDCA B87D 83F0 A002 BBDC C7B8 9ACD B673
