Xfce Foundation status

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:33:43 +0900
"Florian Rivoal" <frivoal at gmail.com> wrote:

> >   * Does a German e.V. (which is a non-profit organization
> > registered in Germany) sound like a reasonable type of organization
> > for Xfce?
> 
> Not too familiar with the "German e.V.", only a little bit with the
> French "Association".
> I have nothing against e.V. a priori, but I am curious as to why. Is
> it mainly because of convenience of it being German, or are there
> advantages to this type of organization compared to similar
> structures in different countries?

Well, the reason for an e.V. is that the e.V. is about the easiest way
to register a non-profit organization in Germany. Why Germany? Well,
someone has to do the paperwork and for donations it doesn't really
matter where the organization is registered. Also, there are a
number of German Xfce contributors and users, so chances are good that
there will always be someone to take care of things.

> >   * For how many years do you think the board should be elected?
> >     3, 2 or 1?
> 
> 2 years. 1 is too short, and would make us spend too much time on  
> campaigning, registering, voting, etc... 3 might be ok, but given
> that Xfce is a volunteer based effort, it is probably important that
> people are not stuck with duties for longer than they can bear.

Yup. My thoughts exactly.

> > How does all this sound to you people?
> 
> Sounds like a good idea that needs to be though of carefully, because
> it might not be easy to correct after the fact.

The articles of association can always be changed. Some communication
with local offices is needed to make the changes have a legal effect
but changes are possible. The KDE folks have changed their articles at
least one time after the KDE e.V. had been founded.

> One extra question. Are you considering the possibility of copyright  
> assignment to the Xfce Foundation? It has pros and cons. The down
> sides are obvious: administrative overhead, and decline in
> contributions from people who are too attached to their code to give
> it away. Benefits include making it much easier to change the license
> of the code (switch from GPL2 to GPL3, for instance), and making it
> easier to handle copyright lawsuits if they ever happen, because you
> don't have to go looking for the copyright holders. I am not entirely
> sure which side I am on, but I think it is worth thinking about.

Yes, copyright assignment is something that we will discuss in the
future. However, it's an independent issue as it is not required to
be included in the articles of association.

  - Jannis
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