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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
Aims and Objectives
- To develop a web based open source software and support to its users.
- To update the software and ensure compatibility with selected web environments
- To ensure that the software has no known vulnerabilities
- etc
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
From Tiki Software Community Association:
Very pragmatic, but worth a read
The Tiki Software Community Association (short version: Tiki Association) is an incorporated non-profit entity with the goal to benefit and support the ongoing work and development of the Tiki software community in the following ways:
Tiki Software Community Association
- Providing stewardship of community trademarks
- Handling a community pool of funds
- Supporting community events to advance community cohesion and people networking
- Oversee community communications and public relations with other organizations
- Supporting community shared hardware infrastructure
The Association’s vision is for the Tiki software community to continually become more professional and trustworthy to users, without bureaucracy or excessive process for contributors.
- Role of Tiki Software Community Association [link on their site]
- Board of Directors [link on their site]
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
Just came across the Piwik analytics platform mission statement, may be helpful.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
Thanks maverick for relinking to Tiki. After more careful reading, I now believe the Mission, Vision and Values I wrote above belong to the Textpattern community, rather than the legal entity. Similarly, with colak’s aims and objectives.
Although Piwik’s mission statement also includes the community, and our entity, if we wish, can be one and the same as the Textpattern community but with additional powers, on reflection I think the Textpattern Association (or whatever we are going to call it) should be separate, following the Tiki model.
So, imho, the aims and objectives of the entity will be along the lines of:
- supporting the Textpattern community and its mission, values, vision, aims and objectives with funding, ownership, legal matters, representation, public relations, communication, admin and decision-making.
The aims and objectives of the community will be much more specific:
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The Textpattern community will
Support and develop friendly, secure, sensible software creation
by
- developing web-based, open-source software (currently Textpattern CMS)
- updating the software and ensuring compatibility with selected web environments
- ensuring that the software has no known vulnerabilities
- etc but going into detail
Support and develop clear, respectful, helpful communication
by
- supporting developers with testing, feedback etc
- supporting each other and end users with respect etc
- developing documentation etc
- developing communication channels etc
- etc but going into detail
(Lots of work to be done, obviously. How’s that feel?)
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
Here again. Sorry for disturbing your Friday afternoon. There’s going to be lots of discussion and decisions to make before a Textpattern Friendly Society / Community Association / Content Management Society / Corporation / Legal Entity is formed. And afterwards too. Can we have a new sub-forum?
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
You can’t have sub forums in this version of FluxBB sorry. I will read through all these posts as soon as I can but I’m with the majority decision on this. Will hopefully get the other devs to chime in with their thoughts soon.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
zero wrote #294138:
So, imho, the aims and objectives of the entity will be along the lines of:
here are some corrections/additions/food for thought
- supporting the Textpattern community and its mission, values, vision, aims and objectives with funding, ownership, legal matters, representation, public relations, communication, admin and decision-making.
The aims and objectives of the community will be much more specific:
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The Textpattern community will
Support and/or develop friendly, secure, sensible software creation
by
- supporting or developing web-based, open-source software (currently Textpattern CMS)
- updating the software and ensuring compatibility with selected web environments
- ensuring that the software has no known vulnerabilities
- etc but going into detail
Support and develop clear, respectful, helpful communication
by
- supporting developers with testing, feedback etc
- supporting each other and end users with respect etc
- developing documentation etc
- developing communication channels etc
- etc but going into detail
(Lots of work to be done, obviously. How’s that feel?)
Funding
The Textpattern Association/Foundation is non-profit. Funding is nevertheless accepted for development fees, legal costs, marketing and public relations.
Representation
The Association/Foundation will be representing the interests of Textpattern software, its developers, employees its community of users in matters relating to the software.
The Association/Foundation will not have any political affiliations/aims
Membership
….
Administration
The Association/Foundation is administered of an 7 member committee as follows
- 2 developers
- 2 support forum admins/moderators
- 3 members
Voting
…. how? Should this be via some software?
Term
Members of the committee will be voted every 2 years
Widowed board position
In case of…. the position is filled by the person with most votes…. where’s a layer when I need one?
Board meetings
…
Quorum
The Board is considered a “quorum” if 4 members are present
Decisions
Decisions of the Board are taken by a majority of board members attending the meeting. The vote is open unless three (3) members request a secret ballot. The decisions are recorded in the textpattern website and executed by the Secretary or Assistant Secretary. The language used will be English.
SUB-Committees.
…
Duties of the board
…
Obligations and rights for members
…
General meetings.
- Once a year – should be virtual
Notification proceedure
…
Quorum
…
Decisions in general meetings
….
Electoral process for the Board
…
Voters
…
Candidates
…
Changes to the constitution.
….
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
Hi Yiannis, thanks for the work. The voting part will need to be scritised thoroughly as there will need to be stability for Members. All looking good so far though I think.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
There is a part I did not include as it definitely needs to be discussed.
Will there be a membership fee? This will need an online form and an application which will count months or years and send reminders.
Membership of course could be free.
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
colak wrote #294162:
There is a part I did not include as it definitely needs to be discussed.
Will there be a membership fee? This will need an online form and an application which will count months or years and send reminders.
Membership of course could be free.
I believe you would have to have some kind of membership. Perhaps with voting rights.
Perhaps there should also be an annual fee to cover on-going administrative costs.
…. texted postive
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
bici wrote #294176:
I believe you would have to have some kind of membership. Perhaps with voting rights.
Perhaps there should also be an annual fee to cover on-going administrative costs.
There are pros and cons with paid membership. From my end we set up 2 NGOs neither of which charges a membership fee. The reason is that we initially wanted to keep the fee low and inclusive to all income classes (€20/year) and then we thought that we did not want to rush to people to collect the money so no fee made good sense.
We should I think have some pre conditions on membership acceptance.
Here are some ideas for discussion.
- the member has to have a txp powered site
- designers who designed at least x number of txp sites even though their own is powered by another system
- registered txp plugin devs
- honorary membership goes to all devs past-present-future
- other honorary membership?
If you agree with the above, we have to have a clause about whose membership is revoked and the reasons for that. Again, here are some ideas
- member has moved to another system
- designer has not designed or maintained a txp site for over 2 years (how do we keep tab?)
- plugin dev has moved to another system and does not support their plugins for more than 2 years
- member wants to withdraw their own membership.
- death
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Textpattern Legal Entity
Yiannis
I’ve not arrived at an opinion yet – though I am leaning towards one option right now
For the purpose of discussion – how would the membership criteria for a Txp Assoc as suggested differ from the general community – beyond a membership application?
It seems broad enough that it would be almost everyone. It seems to me that being part of the association should be easily accessible, but require a greater level of investment.
Vetting and maintaining membership based on site development either would be “take their word for it” or make for more work. Doable? Yes. Worth the time of someone? It seems like there might be more productive pursuits.
I would hate to have someone who is active and wants to contribute not able to participate due to lack of funds, but an annual membership fee would seem to offer a lot of positives and allow for a simple membership criteria. Only people who have paid are on the membership rolls. The rolls automatically reset each year, keeping the rolls up to date. Easy to vette/verify. Since part of the purpose of the association is to help pay for domain names, etc., which requires money, then it would make logical sense to connect membership requirements to the goal of the organization.
I would agree to waiving the membership fee for developers – both active and emeritus. Their contribution has an ongoing value over above other membership activities.
If we were to go with a fee, it should be accessible to the student, to other non-profits, and to the hobbyist, and not just those who are able to generate significant income from their website development and/or who can write it off as a business expense.
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