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
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hey Andreas, Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se wrote: Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? Really good question. From my perspective, there are two critical issues here: 1. It is important that people who have donated money see that it is being put to good use. If they don't, they might not be willing to donate again in the future. 2. We don't want donors to feel that they have been tricked, or that the money is being spent in a different spirit to how it was donated. Therefore, my view is that we need to speak publicly about the funding as quickly as possible, so people know what is happening with it, and we need to identify a use for the funds that reflects the goals of the fund-raising campaign - defending GNOME. Investing it in ways that strengthens the legal position of the project would make sense here, and we could seek advice on this. That said, I don't have a particularly strong opinion on what the money should be specifically spent on (and we don't have to spend it all on one thing). What I do believe is that we need to act to ensure that people feel that their donation is being put to good use. Allan ___ 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 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? We should allocate at least some of that money towards hiring a new Executive Director. An ED is expensive, easily the largest single line item in the budget. But a good ED will help us bring in more money, allowing us to run more campaigns and more hackfests. -- Shaun ___ 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?
Hi, On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 7:23 PM, Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se wrote: As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? Keeping it all as a war chest doesn't make much sense to me. As others have already said, we should spend it to bolster and improve GNOME but what this will mean remains to be defined. I think this will mostly mean that when a proposal to spend some money on something will arrive, we'll be a bit more confortable as this reserve gives us some leeway. However I don't think we can decide to spend a huge chunk of it on a specific item as this was not raised with a specific goal apart from the trademark issue which is no more. -- Alexandre Franke ___ 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?
Hi Andreas, One of the things is an ED, I think everyone agrees here... On the other hand, I have specific items in mind, but I really don't know the drawbacks of them, since I don't know why we didn't do it before. So it needs discussion. I think we have to fix the where is the money I gave to the foundation went? Did it achieve the goals? How does it affect me directly? One thing that I had in mind is, show the community that their money is spend in something that directly affects them (and not only long-time developers, like spending the money on GUADEC or so). I really think we have to show that to those people. For example allocating some money for bountysource or so, in this way we can choose some bugs that we think are priority to fix, and we can say part of your money was spend in this specific thing that will affect directly to you. Another thing I had in mind is a GNOME excellency program. Read as, a GSOC for one person and directly paid by GNOME. The problem with GSOC is that is only for students. And the issue with Outreachy is that is only for women. So the way I imagine it is, one important specific project that people has to compete to be elected to do it, and we offer a little bigger amount than GSOC to promote it. In this way we can achieve a specific goal, independent of the person, so here the goal is not to gain new people, but to achieve the goal of the project. In this way we can also say to the community part of your money was spend in a very great developer, to fix this long-standing issue that directly affects you. I think spending 10% of the money in those initiatives are not that much, and send a message to the community and improves the image of GNOME towards them. But I also believe we need to have a little war chest and I understand big part of the money goes to hackfests, etc. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! | | As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised | $102 608 USD. | Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was | withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on | that. | What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War | Chest [2] or spent on something specific? | | 1. https://www.gnome.org/groupon/ | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_chest | - Andreas | ___ | 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: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
2015-05-24 19:23 GMT+02:00 Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se: Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? The Board this year didn't have much time to discuss further how to spend this amount or even a chunk of it. While I would be for keeping part of this amount as part of the Foundation's cash reserves (for when we'll be hiring an ED, possible other legal issues) I'm open to ideas from the community and will be more than happy to discuss with other Board members which of these proposals is more inherent to the bolster and improve GNOME goal we promised to our donors at first. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ 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, May 24, 2015 at 07:23:01PM +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? As stated in the fundraiser, If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME.. That applies to *all* money directly donated to GNOME, as well. If, in working with the people we worked with on the Groupon issue, we get legal advice that suggests we'd be in a stronger position to defend GNOME by registering trademarks in additional countries, or otherwise getting specific legal structures into place, I think it makes sense to use some of the funds for that purpose; however, that would be a *very* small fraction of the funds raised. I also don't think it's worth keeping all of that money aside in a war chest in anticipation of a future legal issue that may never arise. So, I would suggest that after we consider any potential follow-up legal protections we're advised to take, we place the funds into the general GNOME Foundation account as we would any donations directly to the Foundation. I don't think it makes sense to earmark these funds for any particular purpose other than legal issues, and legal issues should not take up any significant fraction of these funds. I also don't think it makes sense to plan a project that involves spending that entire sum at once, rather than putting it in the GNOME Foundation account where it can be used as needed towards purposes that improve GNOME. - 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?
Hi! On So, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? I don't have a particular idea for those funds (as opposed to the funds earmarked for Security and Privacy), so I am open to ideas. But we must stick to what we promised to our donors: If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME. Cheers, Tobi ___ 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?
Hi Liam, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Liam R. E. Quin l...@holoweb.net wrote: 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]. Just as well Groupon didn't catch on to that before they conceded then ;-) GNOME originally registered as a public benefit cooperation (i.e. a charity) so our income must be substantially related to GNOME's exempt purposes or it could be taxable and as you can see $100,000 would normally amount to a significant chunk of our average annual income.[1] So, I still agree with Tobias and I also agree with everything Cosimo has said, on this: There really ought to be some compelling reason for us to want to sit on that kind of money rather than invest it back into the project. I'll leave it there, so the rest of the candidates can answer. Magdalen [1] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?agency_id=1license_id=1043846; ___ 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?
Hi Andreas, Thanks for your question! On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 6:44 PM, Tobias Mueller mue...@cryptobitch.de wrote: Hi! On So, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? I don't have a particular idea for those funds (as opposed to the funds earmarked for Security and Privacy), so I am open to ideas. But we must stick to what we promised to our donors: If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME. 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. ;-) so in principle, I'd echo Tobias and also advocate we take ideas from members like yourself on what we ought to spend surplus funds on in order to bolster and improve GNOME. Magdalen ___ 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?
Hi Andreas, On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se wrote: As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? It's hard to answer this question without a good understanding of the Foundation cash flow, and even then economics is not my best skill :-) Having said that, assuming the Foundation has some cash reserves outside this war chest, I don't think keeping the money in the bank is the best use of it, as it will quickly lose its value over time; I don't have a single specific idea in mind, but I would like the money to be spent on people. GNOME is in the unique position to be able to support and connect people with the same or converging interests. This can take many concrete shapes: outreach into new communities, bounties for features or fixes, conferences and many more. In other words, I would love to see that money used in a way that leaves the GNOME community enriched with more human capital, and that criteria would guide my choices on how to spend it. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
