Re: [RFC] Creating an OpenEmbedded founation

[Florian Boor <florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de>]

Hi,

Holger Freyther schrieb:

> So the natural question is do we need a foundation at all? Everything  
> seems to work just fine!

judging from the bad experience we had with handhelds.org lately we would have
been able to avoid a major part of the trouble by creating some kind of official
institution to cover GPE (and other projects as well). So even it is currently
looks like a foundation is not necessary you usually would not recognize the
fact that you need one before it is too late.

> So what shouldn't a foundation do?
> 	-Make things more complicated

Well... a foundation will always cause some additional overhead, I guess its
hard to avoid this.

> 	-Doing business as this is where companies are good at. We mean it!

That's quite important, but if our foundation starts to make business that would
cause quite a lot of interest conflicts.

> 	-Own the projects assets. This would include server equipment,  
> devices, hopefully domain-names, etc.

We should consider to make a foundation that is open to cover additional
projects as well. That might be interesting for smaller projects and maybe even
for LinuxToGo.

> 	-Maintain relationship with Companies

This would be really useful if we want to get more contributions from companies
that maybe use OE already but did not get involved into the project itself.

> OpenEmbedded e.V. (e.V. is the german expression for registered  
> associatio):
> 
> 	Pros:
> 		-Tightly regulated by german authorities. This helps us to stick  
> with the DO's and avoid the DON'Ts
> 		-KDE e.V. and probably the GNOME Deutschland e.V.
> 	Cons:
> 		-Quite an overhead. We need to hold  general assemblies, manage our  
> assets ourselves, try to get tax detuctable.
> 		-Managing of members...

I would prefer an e.V. - it is really some overhead, but it has some very
important advantages:
- It is a legal entity based on European law.
- Its basic intention is to cover groups with a common interest like we are.
- It is forced to be transparent.

The last point is the most important in my opinion.

Even if it is some overhead there should be quite a lot examples around that
might provide a good template we could start with.

Greetings

Florian

-- 
The dream of yesterday                  Florian Boor
is the hope of today                    Tel: +49 271-771091-15
and the reality of tomorrow.            Fax: +49 271-771091-19
[Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904]        florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de

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