[ANNOUNCE] Git in the SFC

[ANNOUNCE] Git in the SFC

[Jeff King]

I'm pleased to announce that Git is now a member project of the Software
Freedom Conservancy (SFC). The SFC is a not-for-profit organization that
provides financial and administrative assistance to open source
projects.

Among other things, the SFC will now handle any project money that Git
receives (e.g., Google Summer of Code money). They will also accept
tax-deductible donations on behalf of git that will go to git's project
fund.

For more information, see Git's SFC page:

  http://git-scm.com/sfc

or the SFC's website:

  http://sfconservancy.org

-Peff

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git in the SFC

[Jeff King]

I kept the announcement to the minimum, but a few follow-on points for
the community:

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 07:20:35PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

> I'm pleased to announce that Git is now a member project of the Software
> Freedom Conservancy (SFC). The SFC is a not-for-profit organization that
> provides financial and administrative assistance to open source
> projects.

In case you are wondering, this has basically no bearing on the
development of git code. We are not assigning copyrights to the SFC
(though we could if we so chose), and the only real requirement it makes
on the code is that we continue to develop as an open-source project.
This just gives us a legal entity for doing any monetary things, or
handling contracts or license enforcement should it ever be necessary.

There is a committee of liaisons to the Conservancy consisting of Junio,
Shawn Pearce, and myself. Doing anything (e.g., spending money we have
in our account) requires a majority vote of the committee. The committee
can be expanded with new members by a vote of the existing committee.

All of that is in our contract with the SFC.  There's no official
procedure for doing something like holding a periodic community-wide
election. If somebody wants to organize such a thing, I'm sure the
committee would be happy to recognize the results by adding in whoever
wins the election. For starters, we went with the simplest thing.

> Among other things, the SFC will now handle any project money that Git
> receives (e.g., Google Summer of Code money). They will also accept
> tax-deductible donations on behalf of git that will go to git's project
> fund.

Note that we don't really have a planned use for any money. In the past
it has mostly gone to helping developers (especially students with no
money) make it to the GitTogether. If you do feel like donating money,
you might also consider making a suggestion of what to do with it. :)

You might also consider donating directly to the SFC. Their mission is
good, and git indirectly benefits by having access to their services.
For donations earmarked for git, we give the SFC 10%.

If you have any other questions about what this means for git, or
suggestions on how it could or should impact the community, feel free to
ask. I probably won't have good answers, but Bradley Kuhn from the
Conservancy (cc'd) will.

-Peff

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git in the SFC

[Erik Faye-Lund]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 1:20 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> I'm pleased to announce that Git is now a member project of the Software
> Freedom Conservancy (SFC). The SFC is a not-for-profit organization that
> provides financial and administrative assistance to open source
> projects.
>
> Among other things, the SFC will now handle any project money that Git
> receives (e.g., Google Summer of Code money). They will also accept
> tax-deductible donations on behalf of git that will go to git's project
> fund.
>
> For more information, see Git's SFC page:
>
>  http://git-scm.com/sfc
>

I see there's donation-buttons for google checkout and paypal. Would
it be possible to donate through flattr also?

Flattr for Git donations (was Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git in the SFC)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Erik Faye-Lund wrote at 20:02 (EST) on Thursday:

> I see there's donation-buttons for google checkout and paypal. Would
> it be possible to donate through flattr also?

Yes, I've been looking into flattr in the last two weeks.  I'm trying to
figure out a way for flattr to allow a "master account" so that each of
Conservancy's member projects can have its own and the funds all come to
Conservancy, properly routed for each project.

If Flattr doesn't support that 'master account' idea, what I'll do is
make a separate flattr account for each of Conservancy's member
projects.  Hopefully, that can be done yet have all the banking
information be the same.

I'll experiment more with this over the weekend and into early next
week.  I'll report to the Conservancy Git Committee (which is currently
Jeff, Junio, and Shawn) on what I discover and how we can make it work.

Anyway, I'll find a way to do it, one way or the other.  Flattr has
become a very popular way to donate to FLOSS projects and Conservancy
therefore needs to support it.

BTW, to reiterate what Jeff mentioned in his post, if anyone ever has any
questions about Git's membership in Conservancy, just email
<git@sfconservancy.org>.  That alias reaches both me and the Conservancy
Git Committee simultaneously.
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy