[resending after subscribing to racket-dev] Hi Matthew,
Thanks so much for reviewing the documents and asking questions! My answers to each of your points are inline below.
On 2018-05-07 6:41 pm, Matthew Butterick wrote:
1) The SFC website says that "Member projects can take directed donations, which allows donors to earmark their donations for the benefit of a specific" project. Yet the FSA plainly contradicts this, saying that the SFC will only "make a good faith effort to consider any expressed donor intent ... however, ... expressions of donor intent are not legally binding on" the SFC. [2] Does this mean that if Racket becomes an SFC member project, there will no longer be a way for a donor to ensure that a dollar intended to benefit Racket actually does?
This provision is connected to the way we are legally architected, where our member projects join Conservancy and become a part of our organization, and is necessary for us to be able to extend our charitable status to our member projects in the way we do (you'll see our reference to the FASB statement in this same section). We do our very best to honor donor intent and make sure that donations are used in the manner that they specify. However, we do monitor how our projects want to use their funds to make sure it's an appropriate use for a charity. For example, we must avoid conflicts of interest or any payments that are outside of our mission or would result in an undue benefit to anyone (more on that below).
We are as transparent as we can be with the project and the public. For each member project, we keep our books in an svn repository that authorized project reps can monitor as closely as they want. We also take our reporting requirements very seriously and publish our filings on our own website (https://sfconservancy.org/about/filings/ )
You'll see that, while it hasn't been required, we include a project by project itemization of funds in our annual auditor's report so anyone in the public can see the organization's flow of funds.
2) Apparently, much of the SFC's advocacy and energy goes into GPL / copyleft issues. But last I checked, Racket is migrating away from GPL / copyleft. [3] What is the SFC's position on the MIT license? Do member projects that are not GPL / copyleft have the same standing within SFC?
Conservancy is license agnostic as an organization. We have many projects that are non-copyleft, and they are just as important to us. We only undertake copyleft enforcement for our member projects that ask us to do it. The vast majority of our work is not related to copyleft at all - it's sending developers to conferences, hiring contractors to work on free software, helping to run conferences and helping with various random things that projects need.
3) Where is SFC publish a list of its corporate donors (with amounts)?
You can see a list of donors that choose to be identified on our sponsors page. The most important thing to look at with any nonprofit organization is the public support test reported on Schedule A of the organization's Form 990. This tells you how much of the support of the organization comes from smaller donations. Our number is over 70% (only a third is required to meet the normal test for a charity).
4) Where have the directors & officers of the SFC disclosed their conflicts of interest (specifically, financial relationships with donors and member projects)?
Our directors and officers (and PLC members) must disclose any conflicts of interest on a regular basis to the organization, and we have rules about making sure that anyone with a conflict recuse themselves from related decisions. We make our conflict of interest policy (as well as all of our other relevant policies) public: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/policies/conflict-of-interest-policy.html
I hope this answers your questions! I'm also happy to have a time where I'm available on IRC or by phone if people want to ask questions in real time.
karen Karen M. Sandler Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy __________ Become a Supporter today! http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/fb8e08b4003ed0a9d7a49e383d9e6d89%40sfconservancy.org. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
