Hi, Regarding our discussion about the creation of an association for scientific software, I forward some interesting suggestions by one of the founders of the OFSET association (with a similar purpose in the case of educational software).
Best wishes, Joris ----- Forwarded message from Hilaire Fernandes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- X-Original-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Hilaire Fernandes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Joris van der Hoeven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: OFSET Council <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Association X-Enigmail-Version: 0.93.0.0 X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p10 at math.u-psud.fr Hello Joris, (for recall Joris, author of TeXmacs, is also member of the OFSET since several years) I transfered your message to the OFSET council mailing list. We got some discussion but in fact the discussion switched very quickly to internal matter of OFSET as: should we have the member@ mailing list open or not to non OFSET members? As I understood you are mainly interested in the scope of supporting the *development* of free scientific software. The basic principle is really the same of OFSET, we are targeted in developing free software for education. Ok, I have to confess something, I consider that until know we, at OFSET, have largely failed in this department. Until now we have not been able to provide any serious support to help the development of free software for education. I think the problem now is that the council is not serious about this idea, so it is more a misguidance problem and we need to rethink what OFSET is about. The other aspect to get funding is you need good brand, this is something I have tried to promote, we got some big successes (Unesco, invitation by the EU commission to a worskhop on eLearning, and recently invitation to Taiwan by the MoE (thanks CK)), but given the nature of free software communities (a lot of very very personal interests), someones may try to ignore you or even worst duplicate your effort. This is something you have to keep in mind for your project, because thus tempted to ignore you may also have some capacity to negated your effort, so you may better try to get thus one in your wagon from the beginning. However, regarding the promotion we can still do *HUGE* progress. For example recently was organized in Italy by Andrea Centomo the vice-president of OFSET for Italy, a workshop on free software for science (http://www.math.unipd.it/~zanella/openmath05/), but although Andrea set up this event, the OFSET participation appears no where in the web site. If we cannot fix this kind of problem, it is clear we are going no where, and I personnaly prefer to spend my time in other place and project. This public relation thing is also something you have to remember as well, and you will have to keep pushing the other people to think PR, they may also not like this, but logically this is really what you must do when you decide to go public with a legal organization. Now regarding your question. 1) To set up a Loi1901 organization you need at minimum two person: a president and treasurer. But I suggest you to invite a lot of important people involved in your domain to participate from the beginning, in particularly some of this people who like to speak a lot but do nothing, otherwise these ones may cause some trouble in the future. It is better to get some of these ones close to you since the beginning 2) We have arround 100 members I guess, I don't know the exact number. 3) Regarding the members, people from any country can be member AND ALSO president of the association. The 1st president of OFSET was from California. A final proposition, in case you think OFSET could help, I think you and other people involed in your project could join the OFSET council and take some position up to presidency. But it is propably better you set up a specific organisation. Oh by the way, were you serious when you wrote about selling T-shirt to support the development? I personnaly think these T-shirt & co things does not worth the effort. I wish you a nice 31 January 2005 and a happy new year. Hilaire Joris van der Hoeven a écrit : > Salut Hilaire, > > Comme tu as peut-etre deja compris de mon email de hier, > on est en train de penser a creer une association > pour les logiciels scientifiques libres. > Le but principal (au debut du moins) est d'avoir un compte > en banque pour pouvoir recevoir des donations ou pour pouvoir > vendre des CD's, livres, T-shirts, etc., afin de financer > le developpement et la pub pour des logiciels. > > Un membre sur la liste parlait tres justement d'Ofset et > la possibilite de se joindre a Ofset. Je ne sais pas ce que > tu en penses (les buts etant un peu differents), mais quoi > qu'il en soit, je pense qu'il peut etre une bonne idee > pour nous de s'inspirer un peu de ce que vous avez fait et, > par la suite, de voir ce que l'on pourrait faire ensemble. > > Quelques petites questions : > 1) Ca t'a pris beaucoup de temps pour monter Ofset ? > 2) Vous avez combien de membres actuellement ? > 3) Est-ce que des personnes de la CEE (comme moi) > peuvent etre membre et/ou president d'une assoc 1901 ? > > Amities, Joris > > ------------- > P.S. : a propos de la bande des profs de maths avec qui > je t'avais mis en contact : ils se mettent en route assez > lentement, mais surement. Je te tiendrai au courant de leur > progres concret. En tout cas, si ca marche, ca peut recevoir > le soutien de l'INRIA, donc ca peut etre interessant. > -- http://www.ofset.org/petition Pétition de soutien au développement de logiciels libres pour l'éducation. ----- End forwarded message ----- _______________________________________________ Texmacs-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev
