[Haskell-cafe] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org

Wed May 11 18:11:36 CEST 2011

The intent is that all management of haskell.org infrastructure
continues to be done by the haskell.org committee, following this
charter (e.g. the team that has been making decisions about
haskell.org servers and systems for the past 6 months):

    http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell.org_committee

So the day-to-day work of haskell.org that we all see remains with the
community. The paper filing and legal work is done by the SFC support.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The process for the haskell.org committee itself was voted on last year:

 *  The committee consists of 7 members. Members are expected to serve
a 3 year term, and terms are staggered so that 2 or 3 members step
down each year, at the end of October.

 *  The members will elect one of their number to be chair each year.
The chair is responsible for making sure that things keep moving, and
to ensure that a conclusion is reached on any issues raised.

 *    When a member steps down, either because they have reached the
end of their term or because other circumstances require them to step
down early, open self-nominations will be sought from the community
via the haskell@ mailing list. Previous committee members, including
those who have just stepped down, will also be eligible for
nomination. The committee will then select a replacement from amongst
those nominated.

 *   Each year, the committee will post a statement of the haskell.org
assets, and the transactions for that year. Some details may be
omitted, e.g. for confidentiality of donors.

Cheers,
   Don

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones
<simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:
> Dear haskell.org committee
>
> Great stuff.  Thanks for getting this together.
>
> Things I wondered about are:
>        - who will run the haskell.org entity?
>        - how are they chosen?  do they have fixed terms?
>        - how are they accountable to the Haskell Community
>          (eg an a brief annual report would be good;
>             since money is involved, accounts perhaps)
>
> None of these look like being problems to me, but I think we should have a page that sets out these matters -- a kind of constitution for haskell.org, if you like -- as part of the process.
>
> Simon
>
> | -----Original Message-----
> | From: libraries-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:libraries-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf
> | Of Don Stewart
> | Sent: 10 May 2011 23:45
> | To: haskell at haskell.org; Haskell Libraries; GHC Users Mailing List; haskell-cafe;
> | committee at haskell.org
> | Subject: Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
> |
> | 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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