[Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

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 at .

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
>>     Group<http://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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Haskell at haskell.org
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
>>
> 
> 
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