On 2018-05-08 6:17 pm, Leif Andersen wrote:
Karen,
Before I begin I'd just like to say thanks for the work you and the
rest of conservancy do.
I've followed your work since I was in high school and I also
appreciate what you've done at both the SFLC and gnome foundation.
Finally, thank you for your work bringing more women to the free
software community. I know it personally helps me feel more welcome
here.
Thanks, that means a lot to me!
Alright, with all of that out of the way...
I am concerned about the policy's use of the word `grant`. Does this
mean that all (NSF,, etc.) grants related to Racket's development need
to go through conservancy. Or that we are required to give 10% of the
grant amount to conservancy? It would be great if we could get that
stated a bit more explicitly in the actual four corners of the
document.
Good question, and I'm thrilled folks are reading all of this closely!
Third parties could received grants to work on Racket outside of
Conservancy and Conservancy would not have any involvement in that. For
example, a grant could go directly to an academic institution working on
something related to Racket, and a company could enter into an agreement
to do work on Racket as part of a private contract outside of
Conservancy too. Anything that was dedicated to the project itself would
be expected to come through Conservancy. The agreement is simply stated
- 10% of all funds that come in to the project would go to Conservancy.
While this amount may seem high, 10% of our projects' income doesn't
cover the work we do by a long shot for our projects. We take a loss on
fiscal sponsorship because we think it's important and we go and
fundraise directly to cover the rest primarily through our Supporter
program. For example, academic institutions customarily take at least
30% of any grant funding. We recently were in discussions with an
academic institution that takes 68%! Making sure that funds are spent
properly, whether it's reimbursing developer travel, administering a
grant, or undertaking any of our other project activities takes more
work than you would expect! Plus we have to cover all of our financial
reporting, bookkeeping, administrative and general legal costs too that
all of our projects benefit from.
Also, while very clear that this is a standard template, it seems like
we should talk about the actual document (even a draft of the actual
one), rather than one that says FIXME all over the place.
I totally understand. The two substantive FIXME portions of the
agreement are the names of the committee (which Deb provided in her
initial email) and the representation section. For the representation
section for Racket, this will be a simple majority committee of at least
3 where no two members can be financially related to the same entity at
any time. The committee elects an authorized representative to be the
primary interface with Conservancy.
Finally, I absolutely appreciate the effort that conservancy makes to
both support free software and be transparent. But as before, its
important to get things down in writing. So, does conservancy have a
constitution or some other charter document that states how it defines
conservancies goals, which will hopefully help define how conservancy
goes about its 'best effort'?
Yes! Believe it or not, we are often criticized for having too much
information and text on our website :)
You can take a look at our About page, our descriptions of what we do
and, perhaps most importantly, take a look at our public filings that
we've aggregated on our website. In particular, the 1023 sets forth for
the IRS what we do as an organization. You can also check out our
corporate purposes in our articles of incorporation which are all about
promoting and improving free and open source software.
If it's not obvious, we really value transparency which is why we have
the policy to post on a project's mailing list before finalizing
admission to Conservancy. We want to make sure that everyone is on the
same page and has a chance to ask questions directly!
Anyway, thank you again for your work, it really means a lot to me.
Hope you have a good day.
You too!
karen
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