Re: Questions for candidates
Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in general (in addition to being useful free software). Obviously we want GNOME to be successful and for there to be greater adoption, and that would place Free Software in the hands of more people. However, if I'm reading your question right, you are asking what else we have to offer the Free Software cause. One answer here is the emerging agenda around privacy. My view is that the GNOME project is at the forefront of advances in this area, which will not just benefit GNOME's users, but a whole range of Free Software projects. As a member of the board, I would seek to support this aspect of our work wherever possible. I would like GNOME to positively influence other projects (both propriety and Free Software ones) wherever possible. That might be around a range of issues, such as equality and diversity in Free Software, open standards and privacy. One of the best things we can do here is set a good example, but we can also speak out and participate in campaigns where appropriate. Advancing a wide agenda both helps to define us as a project, and gives us a wider impact. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi. On Mo, 2015-05-25 at 21:16 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. This is also my impression. In addition to what others have noted, I think this goes along with GNOME going more professional. I think that it would be better if we had more non-professional contributors, but more in the sense that we always want and need more contributors. In order to achieve that I think we're doing what we can, e.g. be present at events like FOSDEM, have a good story for new contributors, enabling people to collaborate in person. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, I echo what Allan said. I remark: I would like GNOME to positively influence other projects both propriety and Free Software ones. In my opinion the best way is make GNOME a good example to be, make it reach more people, and promote GNOME as a good solution for the users, being one of its strongest points being a free software platform, but without restricting the users on their software election. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should | contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in | general (in addition to being useful free software). | | -- | Dr Richard Stallman | President, Free Software Foundation | 51 Franklin St | Boston MA 02110 | USA | www.fsf.org www.gnu.org | Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. | | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GIMP donation
Hi everyone, I work for Linux Voice magazine and we donated £300 to GIMP (via the Gnome Foundation): http://www.linuxvoice.com/first-profit-donating-scheme-the-winners/ We made a bank transfer following the instructions here: http://www.gimp.org/donating/ That was on 18th of May, with reference For Gimp - LV. I also emailed fundrais...@gnome.org with details but heard nothing. Then, on 20th of May, £300 was sent to us from Northern Trust. Is that the money bouncing back to us? Can someone from the Foundation please respond about the donation? -- Mike Saunders Linux Voice magazine http://www.linuxvoice.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
On 2015-05-27 13:33, j...@joshtriplett.org wrote: On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 05:32:27PM +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: With that said, at the moment we are technically “delinquent so we have lost our tax exempt status for not submitting required 990 forms.[4,5] Assuming that has been a mistake and that we do actually want to benefit from 501(c)(3) status, then I think we would be obliged to sort all that out and just stick to the original mission of the GNOME Foundation which essentially allows us to continue to do things like produce useful free software and educate people all about it. I've seen this mentioned previously on this list as well, and I'm curious how that happened. I would also suggest that this should be the top priority issue for the GNOME Foundation to fix. Is the current Board already working to fix this? A quick search shows GNOME is still listed on the IRS website as being in good standing: http://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/pub78Search.do?ein1=names=GNOMEcity=state=All...country=USdeductibility=alldispatchMethod=searchCharitiessubmitName=Search (actually I think you'll need to redo your own search) and in CA I see we are listed as active http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/ We were delinquent with CA a few years ago when I started as ED I believe but we straightened that out. Rosanna should check on our current filing status but often our accountants file extensions on the 990s. karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
I've seen this mentioned previously on this list as well, and I'm curious how that happened. There is an interesting blog about these things which is worth a read (seems a little like some rule tightening has gone on and perhaps caught a few organisations unaware, but it's hard to say what's happened at this stage).[1] I would also suggest that this should be the top priority issue for the GNOME Foundation to fix. Likewise. Is the current Board already working to fix this? A quick search shows GNOME is still listed on the IRS website as being in good standing: http://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/pub78Search.do?ein1=names=GNOMEcity=state=All...country=USdeductibility=alldispatchMethod=searchCharitiessubmitName=Search (actually I think you'll need to redo your own search) Unfortunately, it is delinquent according to the California Department of Justice (you may need to redo your own search to get it to come up there too).[2,3] It might be worth getting in touch with them directly about this because according to the Department of Justice, they have not received copies of the IRS Form 990 for the fiscal years ending 9/30/2009, 9/30/2011, 9/30/2012 and 9/30/2013 and the Annual Registration Renewal Fee Report (RRF-1) and IRS Form 990 for the fiscal year ending 9/30/2014 were due on February 15, 2015, as well. Magdalen [1] https://blogs.gnome.org/jnelson/2014/06/30/the-new-501c3-and-the-future-of-free-software-in-the-united-states [2] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?agency_id=1license_id=1043846; [3] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Search.aspx?facility=Y ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
I advise those who wish to follow 501(c)(3) status of Free Software related orgs to check this repository [0] that community members maintain. It includes a copy of the IRS revocation notice file [1] and the IRS in good standing list [2] (which you can also get from the IRS website directly). I was able to verify that GNOME Foundation was in good standing with the IRS as of *today* at 09:51 UTC with the following commands: $ wget -N http://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/data-download-pub78.zip $ unzip data-download-pub78.zip $ egrep -i 'GNOME *Foundation' data-download-pub78.txt 043572618|Gnome Foundation Inc.|Boston|MA|United States|PC $ env TZ=UTC /bin/ls -l data-download-pub78.zip -rw--- 1 bkuhn bkuhn 19044058 May 27 09:51 data-download-pub78.zip You can do similar with our Git repository as follows: $ git clone https://gitorious.org/floss-foundations/npo-public-filings.git $ cd npo-public-filings $ egrep -i 'GNOME *Foundation' IRS-501c3-Database/irs-qualified-c3-list.txt $ git log -1 IRS-501c3-Database/irs-qualified-c3-list.txt *And* you can also use our Git repository's history to show that GNOME Foundation never had its status revoked historically -- keeping track of such potential incidents for any non-profit is why we download those files each month. Thus, this command can confirm for you: $ git log IRS-501c3-Database/irs-revoked-c3-list.txt|grep -i GNOME that while the GNOME Hollow Widlife and METROGNOME Collective have had some IRS status troubles, GNOME Foundation has had no such trouble. Perhaps you heard about the (c)(3) status revocation of one of those orgs and got confused? Anyway, accusing a charity of losing its 501(c)(3) status is tantamount to accusing people of losing their driver's licenses due to driving poorly. In this case, given how trivially easy it is to test the veracity of the claim, it's particularly unfortunate that you would make such accusations so carelessly. [0] https://www.gitorious.org/floss-foundations/npo-public-filings/source/master: (It's on gitorious now, but we're franticly looking for a place to move it since gitorious dies this month) [1] http://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/data-download-revocation.zip [2] http://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/data-download-pub78.zip -- -- bkuhn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:07:37AM -0700, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: I advise those who wish to follow 501(c)(3) status of Free Software related orgs to check this repository [0] that community members maintain. It includes a copy of the IRS revocation notice file [1] and the IRS in good standing list [2] (which you can also get from the IRS website directly). I was able to verify that GNOME Foundation was in good standing with the IRS as of *today* at 09:51 UTC with the following commands: $ wget -N http://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/data-download-pub78.zip $ unzip data-download-pub78.zip $ egrep -i 'GNOME *Foundation' data-download-pub78.txt 043572618|Gnome Foundation Inc.|Boston|MA|United States|PC $ env TZ=UTC /bin/ls -l data-download-pub78.zip -rw--- 1 bkuhn bkuhn 19044058 May 27 09:51 data-download-pub78.zip You can do similar with our Git repository as follows: $ git clone https://gitorious.org/floss-foundations/npo-public-filings.git $ cd npo-public-filings $ egrep -i 'GNOME *Foundation' IRS-501c3-Database/irs-qualified-c3-list.txt $ git log -1 IRS-501c3-Database/irs-qualified-c3-list.txt *And* you can also use our Git repository's history to show that GNOME Foundation never had its status revoked historically -- keeping track of such potential incidents for any non-profit is why we download those files each month. Thus, this command can confirm for you: $ git log IRS-501c3-Database/irs-revoked-c3-list.txt|grep -i GNOME Keeping that information in a git repository is really handy; thanks! Have you considered posting about this repository and its purpose more widely, such as on LWN or similar, to make more people aware of it? And thanks for the confirmation about GNOME's status. [0] https://www.gitorious.org/floss-foundations/npo-public-filings/source/master: (It's on gitorious now, but we're franticly looking for a place to move it since gitorious dies this month) You might consider talking to the Sunlight Foundation or similar, who track other information like this, including on a historical basis. I've CCed Paul Tagliamonte of the Sunlight Foundation (also of OSI and Debian), who might be able to help here. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
Hi Josh, And thanks for the confirmation about GNOME's status. I doubt the information from California Department of justice is inaccurate, but if that is the case it would be wise for us to address that with them. What I suspect is more likely to have happened is what Karen has suggested could have happened: that the accountant filed for an extension and the CDJ are honouring it. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GIMP donation
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 6:00 AM, Mike Saunders m...@linuxvoice.com wrote: Hi everyone, I work for Linux Voice magazine and we donated £300 to GIMP (via the Gnome Foundation): http://www.linuxvoice.com/first-profit-donating-scheme-the-winners/ We made a bank transfer following the instructions here: http://www.gimp.org/donating/ That was on 18th of May, with reference For Gimp - LV. I also emailed fundrais...@gnome.org with details but heard nothing. Then, on 20th of May, £300 was sent to us from Northern Trust. Is that the money bouncing back to us? Can someone from the Foundation please respond about the donation? We can help follow up. Private mail from the board will follow. sri -- Mike Saunders Linux Voice magazine http://www.linuxvoice.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GIMP donation
On 27 May 2015 at 14:00, Mike Saunders m...@linuxvoice.com wrote: Hi everyone, I work for Linux Voice magazine and we donated £300 to GIMP (via the Gnome Foundation): http://www.linuxvoice.com/first-profit-donating-scheme-the-winners/ We made a bank transfer following the instructions here: http://www.gimp.org/donating/ Those instructions are wrong, I have contacted someone at GIMP asking them to update the details for the donations. That was on 18th of May, with reference For Gimp - LV. I also emailed fundrais...@gnome.org with details but heard nothing. Then, on 20th of May, £300 was sent to us from Northern Trust. Is that the money bouncing back to us? Can someone from the Foundation please respond about the donation? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like your email got through for some reason. I'm not sure who Northern Trust are, but they are not related to us as far as I know. We will look into it, and in future it is more appropriate to email bo...@gnome.org with financial quesitons. -- Mike Saunders Linux Voice magazine http://www.linuxvoice.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GIMP donation
On 27 May 2015 at 17:02, Mike Saunders m...@linuxvoice.com wrote: On 2015-05-27 17:58, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: Those instructions are wrong, I have contacted someone at GIMP asking them to update the details for the donations. Thanks. Can you find out if the money was accepted? We've never heard of Northern Trust either, but if if now owns the Citizens Bank account listed for the GNOME Foundation on GIMP's donation page, that may explain why £300 has come back to us... We'll do our best to find out as quickly as possible, although the process tends to be very slow from what I have seen previously. That account is actually long since closed so in the best case the money that you received was those funds being returned. In the worst case the account has been reopened and we need to extract the funds from it, which would take about a month or so. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GIMP donation
On 2015-05-27 17:58, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: Those instructions are wrong, I have contacted someone at GIMP asking them to update the details for the donations. Thanks. Can you find out if the money was accepted? We've never heard of Northern Trust either, but if if now owns the Citizens Bank account listed for the GNOME Foundation on GIMP's donation page, that may explain why £300 has come back to us... -- Mike Saunders Linux Voice magazine http://www.linuxvoice.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Thinking about your answer, and a couple of others, I realize that I didn't phrase my question clearly. You've made several _technical_ suggestions for how GNOME can be more useful and thus do more to enhance GNU/Linux and the free world. They are interesting ideas, and could make GNOME a better piece of free software. However, the foundation board doesn't make technical decisions, and the foundation couldn't implement ideas of this kind. Thus, what I really should ask the candidates is this. How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above what GNOME contributes by being useful free software? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GIMP donation
Hi Mike, When our account was closed with Citizens Bank, our ties with the bank were severed. As we neither own the account nor sent the funds, it is unlikely either bank will be willing to give us information about your wire transfer. If you contact your bank you should be able to initiate a trace on the wire and see where it went. I am unfamiliar with Northern Trust but a trace would tell you if they were affiliated with your transfer. Thanks, Rosanna On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova kittykat3...@gmail.com wrote: On 27 May 2015 at 17:02, Mike Saunders m...@linuxvoice.com wrote: On 2015-05-27 17:58, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: Those instructions are wrong, I have contacted someone at GIMP asking them to update the details for the donations. Thanks. Can you find out if the money was accepted? We've never heard of Northern Trust either, but if if now owns the Citizens Bank account listed for the GNOME Foundation on GIMP's donation page, that may explain why £300 has come back to us... We'll do our best to find out as quickly as possible, although the process tends to be very slow from what I have seen previously. That account is actually long since closed so in the best case the money that you received was those funds being returned. In the worst case the account has been reopened and we need to extract the funds from it, which would take about a month or so. -- https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/board-list From time to time confidential and sensitive information will be discussed on this mailing list. Please take care to mark confidential information as confidential, and do not redistribute this information without permission. -- Rosanna Yuen Director of Operations GNOME Foundation, Inc. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 05:32:27PM +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: With that said, at the moment we are technically “delinquent so we have lost our tax exempt status for not submitting required 990 forms.[4,5] Assuming that has been a mistake and that we do actually want to benefit from 501(c)(3) status, then I think we would be obliged to sort all that out and just stick to the original mission of the GNOME Foundation which essentially allows us to continue to do things like produce useful free software and educate people all about it. I've seen this mentioned previously on this list as well, and I'm curious how that happened. I would also suggest that this should be the top priority issue for the GNOME Foundation to fix. Is the current Board already working to fix this? - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above what GNOME contributes by being useful free software? I am not sure whether you feel I answered your question either. I think it could be useful if you could be more specific about what you mean, especially as there are a fair few restrictions on what we at GNOME can do to contribute to the advance of free software under the bylaws and CNPBC so we are obliged to stick to the mission if we are to continue to enjoy 501(c)(3) status as a public benefit corporation (i.e. a charity).[1,2,3] With that said, at the moment we are technically “delinquent so we have lost our tax exempt status for not submitting required 990 forms.[4,5] Assuming that has been a mistake and that we do actually want to benefit from 501(c)(3) status, then I think we would be obliged to sort all that out and just stick to the original mission of the GNOME Foundation which essentially allows us to continue to do things like produce useful free software and educate people all about it. I would be pretty open to hearing any ideas on what we can do above and beyond being useful free software which does fall within GNOME’s remit, though. I am just not sure I really understand what you’re asking about correctly! Do you have any related ideas which you would like us to think about, concerning this? Magdalen [1] https://www.gnome.org//wp-content/uploads/2011/11/bylaws.pdf [2] http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations/Exemption-Requirements-Section-501(c)(3)-Organizations [3] http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations/Exempt-Purposes-Internal-Revenue-Code-Section-501(c)(3) [4] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/auto_rev_faqs.pdf [5] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f990.pdf ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 10:27:28AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: Thinking about your answer, and a couple of others, I realize that I didn't phrase my question clearly. You've made several _technical_ suggestions for how GNOME can be more useful and thus do more to enhance GNU/Linux and the free world. They are interesting ideas, and could make GNOME a better piece of free software. However, the foundation board doesn't make technical decisions, and the foundation couldn't implement ideas of this kind. The first of the two items I mentioned was as much an issue of policy as technology, and the second was a high-level direction. The board does not make technical decisions, but the board and the foundation can offer general, non-binding guidance, as well as encourage development in specific areas or towards specific goals by various means (e.g. targeted hackathons, user studies, hardware availability). Nonetheless, I understand the distinction you're making. Thus, what I really should ask the candidates is this. How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above what GNOME contributes by being useful free software? A few possibilities, more tailored towards what the Foundation could do rather than what GNOME software could do: - More direct partnership with organizations creating software that is commonly used with GNOME and built on GNOME technologies; not just between community members in each community, but taking advantage of the GNOME Foundation's organizational status to establish higher-level contacts with people setting direction for those organizations. For instance, the GNOME Foundation should have some relationship with Mozilla around Firefox and its use of GTK and GNOME technologies on Linux, and with the LibreOffice project. We should use such relationships for two purposes: to ensure that those projects integrate with GNOME as well as any native GNOME application, and to attempt to get projects commonly used with GNOME to maintain policies that align with the cause of Free Software. - More direct partnership and promotion with those working to bring Free Software to many more users, such as Endless. (*Not* suggesting a monetary partnership here.) - The GNOME Foundation, as an organization, could take a position on more issues related to Free Software. GNOME has issued position statements before (such as https://www.gnome.org/news/2015/03/gnome-supports-gpl-compliance-through-vmware-suit-2/); we could also work with other activism-centric organizations like the EFF, and ensure that we have processes in place to quickly determine which causes we'd want to sign on for. - I would suggest that the GNOME Foundation should take a position on the responsible hosting of Free Software. SourceForge has started demonstrating an utter lack of responsibility, bundling malware with installers for Free Software, including GNOME projects like the GIMP. I'm currently thinking of writing up a Hosting Free Software Responsibly statement for projects, organizations (FSF, GNOME, etc), and hosting sites to sign on to. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 21:52 +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: Hi Andreas, I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think it's probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a wee bit excessive. ;-) It doesn't sound like a lot of money to me. It's probably not enough to fight a single trademark case in court in the US - you'd need two or three times as much money [1, 2]. Regards, Liam [1] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2013/05/23/trademark-protection-is-litigation-worth-the-cost/ [2] http://tcattorney.typepad.com/ip/2011/05/trademark-infringement-lawsuits.html -- Liam R. E. Quin l...@holoweb.net http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
