[Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

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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