Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
Hi, As mentioned in the committee's annual report (http://haskellorg.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/first-year-report/), our attempt to join SFC has stalled because they don't have the capacity to accept new projects at the moment. We therefore applied to join SPI (http://www.spi-inc.org/), and they have now offered us associated project status (http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/). We intend to accept this offer, but are taking this final opportunity to seek feedback from the community before doing so. SPI is very like SFC in what it does and how it operates, so we don't expect this to make any substantial differences to the FAQ quoted below. Regards, Ganesh on behalf of the haskell.org committee On 10/05/2011 23:44, Don Stewart wrote: Hello everyone. The haskell.org committee[1], in the interest of the long-term stability of the open source Haskell community infrastructure, has decided to incorporate haskell.org as a legal entity. This email outlines our recommendation, and seeks input from the community on this decision. The committee's proposal is that haskell.org incorporate as an entity under the Software Freedom Conservancy umbrella organization (the same group that Darcs joined recently): http://sfconservancy.org/ If we proceed with this move, haskell.org will be a legal entity, and registered as a non-profit, allowing us to more directly accept (US tax-deductible) donations, and to invest in assets that benefit the Haskell open source community. We welcome your feedback on the proposal attached below. -- Don Stewart (on behalf of the Haskell.org committee) = A proposal for the incorporation of Haskell.org = In recent years, haskell.org has started to receive assets, e.g. money from Google Summer Of Code, donations for Hackathons, and a Sparc machine for use in GHC development. We have also started spending this money: in particular, on hosting haskell.org itself. There is also interest in running fundraising drives for specific things such as Hackathon sponsorship and hosting fees. However, haskell.org doesn't currently exist as a legal entity, meaning that these assets have had to be held on our behalf by other entities, such as Galois and various universities. This leads to tricky situations, with no-one being sure who should decide how the haskell.org assets can be used. To solve these problems, we propose that haskell.org applies to become a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/. The SFC is a non-profit organization that provides free financial and administrative services to open source projects. Additionally, it has 501(c)(3) status, meaning donations from the US are tax-deductible. The SFC would hold haskell.org's money and other assets, and would be able to accept donations on behalf of haskell.org. The haskell.org committee, as described here [2], will make decisions on spending assets and other decisions related to governing the non-profit. Before proceeding, we are inviting input from the community in the form of specific objections or queries regarding the plan. We've tried to answer some of the most likely questions: Q: Does this mean that my Haskell project must now be covered by a copyleft licence such as GPL? A: No, but Haskell projects using haskell.org resource should use an Open Source licence http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical. Q: Will it still be possible to use community.h.o to host non-open-source material, such as academic papers? A: An overall minority of such content, as is the current situation, is not a problem. Q: Will it still be possible to have job ads on the haskell.org mailing lists and website? A: Yes. Q: Will this affect our ability to host the Haskell Symposium http://www.haskell.org/haskell-symposium/ and Industrial Haskell Grouphttp://industry.haskell.org/ webpages within haskell.org? A: No. Q: What will be the relationship between haskell.org and other organizations such as the Haskell Symposium and Industrial Haskell Group? A: Those organisations will continue to exist as separate entities. Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation The Haskell Foundation was created, would haskell.org be able to join it? A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation would become the owner of the haskell.org domain name, with the cost divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would be renamed community.haskell.org in order to avoid confusion. [1]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell.org_committee [2]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell.org_committee#Operation ___ Haskell mailing list hask...@haskell.org
Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
BTW as with the Don's original message about incorporating, I distributed this widely to increase awareness, but please restrict any feedback to haskell-cafe@ and committee@. Sorry for the noise! Ganesh On 16/12/2011 09:08, Ganesh Sittampalam wrote: Hi, As mentioned in the committee's annual report (http://haskellorg.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/first-year-report/), our attempt to join SFC has stalled because they don't have the capacity to accept new projects at the moment. We therefore applied to join SPI (http://www.spi-inc.org/), and they have now offered us associated project status (http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/). We intend to accept this offer, but are taking this final opportunity to seek feedback from the community before doing so. SPI is very like SFC in what it does and how it operates, so we don't expect this to make any substantial differences to the FAQ quoted below. Regards, Ganesh on behalf of the haskell.org committee On 10/05/2011 23:44, Don Stewart wrote: Hello everyone. The haskell.org committee[1], in the interest of the long-term stability of the open source Haskell community infrastructure, has decided to incorporate haskell.org as a legal entity. This email outlines our recommendation, and seeks input from the community on this decision. The committee's proposal is that haskell.org incorporate as an entity under the Software Freedom Conservancy umbrella organization (the same group that Darcs joined recently): http://sfconservancy.org/ If we proceed with this move, haskell.org will be a legal entity, and registered as a non-profit, allowing us to more directly accept (US tax-deductible) donations, and to invest in assets that benefit the Haskell open source community. We welcome your feedback on the proposal attached below. -- Don Stewart (on behalf of the Haskell.org committee) = A proposal for the incorporation of Haskell.org = In recent years, haskell.org has started to receive assets, e.g. money from Google Summer Of Code, donations for Hackathons, and a Sparc machine for use in GHC development. We have also started spending this money: in particular, on hosting haskell.org itself. There is also interest in running fundraising drives for specific things such as Hackathon sponsorship and hosting fees. However, haskell.org doesn't currently exist as a legal entity, meaning that these assets have had to be held on our behalf by other entities, such as Galois and various universities. This leads to tricky situations, with no-one being sure who should decide how the haskell.org assets can be used. To solve these problems, we propose that haskell.org applies to become a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/. The SFC is a non-profit organization that provides free financial and administrative services to open source projects. Additionally, it has 501(c)(3) status, meaning donations from the US are tax-deductible. The SFC would hold haskell.org's money and other assets, and would be able to accept donations on behalf of haskell.org. The haskell.org committee, as described here [2], will make decisions on spending assets and other decisions related to governing the non-profit. Before proceeding, we are inviting input from the community in the form of specific objections or queries regarding the plan. We've tried to answer some of the most likely questions: Q: Does this mean that my Haskell project must now be covered by a copyleft licence such as GPL? A: No, but Haskell projects using haskell.org resource should use an Open Source licence http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical. Q: Will it still be possible to use community.h.o to host non-open-source material, such as academic papers? A: An overall minority of such content, as is the current situation, is not a problem. Q: Will it still be possible to have job ads on the haskell.org mailing lists and website? A: Yes. Q: Will this affect our ability to host the Haskell Symposium http://www.haskell.org/haskell-symposium/ and Industrial Haskell Grouphttp://industry.haskell.org/ webpages within haskell.org? A: No. Q: What will be the relationship between haskell.org and other organizations such as the Haskell Symposium and Industrial Haskell Group? A: Those organisations will continue to exist as separate entities. Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation The Haskell Foundation was created, would haskell.org be able to join it? A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation would become the owner of the haskell.org domain name, with the cost divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would be renamed community.haskell.org in order to avoid
Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 7:08 AM, Ganesh Sittampalam gan...@earth.li wrote: Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation The Haskell Foundation was created, would haskell.org be able to join it? A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation would become the owner of the haskell.org domain name, with the cost divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would be renamed community.haskell.org in order to avoid confusion. Would it be a too ambitious goal to create the Haskell Foundation at this moment? -- Giovanni ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
On 16/12/2011 10:59, Giovanni Tirloni wrote: On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 7:08 AM, Ganesh Sittampalam gan...@earth.li mailto:gan...@earth.li wrote: Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation The Haskell Foundation was created, would haskell.org http://haskell.org be able to join it? A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation would become the owner of the haskell.org http://haskell.org domain name, with the cost divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would be renamed community.haskell.org http://community.haskell.org in order to avoid confusion. Would it be a too ambitious goal to create the Haskell Foundation at this moment? It would be a lot of administrative effort - managing accounts, tax filings, etc. While it would give us more control, I don't think the benefits would be very significant. So in my view for now it's best not to go it alone. Cheers, Ganesh ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
On 16 December 2011 11:10, Ganesh Sittampalam gan...@earth.li wrote: On 16/12/2011 10:59, Giovanni Tirloni wrote: On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 7:08 AM, Ganesh Sittampalam gan...@earth.li mailto:gan...@earth.li wrote: Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation The Haskell Foundation was created, would haskell.org http://haskell.org be able to join it? A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation would become the owner of the haskell.org http://haskell.org domain name, with the cost divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would be renamed community.haskell.org http://community.haskell.org in order to avoid confusion. Would it be a too ambitious goal to create the Haskell Foundation at this moment? It would be a lot of administrative effort - managing accounts, tax filings, etc. While it would give us more control, I don't think the benefits would be very significant. So in my view for now it's best not to go it alone. I agree. If at some point we feel that having a Haskell Foundation would be desirable (despite the additional overheads) there shouldn't be anything stopping us from doing so. Are there any drawbacks in joining such an organisation? How do they finance their overheads? Would a donation to haskell.org include a fee to SPI? I couldn't find any information on their website. / Thomas ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
On 16/12/2011 13:21, Thomas Schilling wrote: On 16 December 2011 11:10, Ganesh Sittampalam gan...@earth.li wrote: On 16/12/2011 10:59, Giovanni Tirloni wrote: Would it be a too ambitious goal to create the Haskell Foundation at this moment? It would be a lot of administrative effort - managing accounts, tax filings, etc. While it would give us more control, I don't think the benefits would be very significant. So in my view for now it's best not to go it alone. I agree. If at some point we feel that having a Haskell Foundation would be desirable (despite the additional overheads) there shouldn't be anything stopping us from doing so. Are there any drawbacks in joining such an organisation? How do they finance their overheads? Would a donation to haskell.org include a fee to SPI? I couldn't find any information on their website. Yes - 5% goes to SPI to cover their overheads. It's detailed in http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/ but not on their donations page at http://www.spi-inc.org/donations/. 5% seems reasonable to me and in line with what similar donation aggregators charge, for example the Charities Aid Foundation in the UK charges 4%: https://www.cafonline.org/my-personal-giving/plan-your-giving/individual-charity-account.aspx In effect we've been getting the admin for free from Galois up till now, but it's been getting too troublesome for them. Cheers, Ganesh ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
On 16 December 2011 13:36, Ganesh Sittampalam gan...@earth.li wrote: Would a donation to haskell.org include a fee to SPI? I couldn't find any information on their website. Yes - 5% goes to SPI to cover their overheads. It's detailed in http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/ but not on their donations page at http://www.spi-inc.org/donations/. 5% seems reasonable to me and in line with what similar donation aggregators charge, for example the Charities Aid Foundation in the UK charges 4%: https://www.cafonline.org/my-personal-giving/plan-your-giving/individual-charity-account.aspx Yes, that sounds reasonable. Credit cards donations also cause an overhead of 4.5% (and the 5% are deducted from the rest), so the total overhead for a credit card donation would be: (1 - 0.955 * 0.95) = 9.3% That's fairly high, but I don't see a way around that. In effect we've been getting the admin for free from Galois up till now, but it's been getting too troublesome for them. Yes, I certainly understand that. The other reason are tax-deductible donations, which I assume isn't really possible with Galois handling all the financials. / Thomas ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
