Drupal foundation (was: [drupal-devel] adsense from google for drupal)

[Boris Mann]

(back on solid ground, have a ton of notes to post over the next couple of days)

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:57:51 +0000, Vladimir Zlatanov <vlado at dikini.net> wrote:
> > Joining SPI would basically enable us to collect tax deductible
> > donations from US citizens. Nothing more and nothing less. There is a
> > similar organisation in .de but due to German tax laws they cannot
> > _guarantee_ that we will get the money that people send to them on our
> > behalf. I suspect that they say this to cover their legal behind,
> > but...
> > Also, this would only be applicable to people paying taxes in .de.
> Tax deductions are good, but not the only thing which matters.
> Things that matter IMHO are:

Vlado makes a good point, and I think that is how we should approach
the construction of a foundation. What do we need it to do? As I see
it, there are actually only 3 things that are absolutely required, and
everything else comes down to support functions.
* have legal standing as some sort of entity which can do things (like own
* be able to receive money (i.e. open a bank account)
* pay out money

While some sort of "foundation" would be a nice-to-have, I think a
structure that handles those items would be a good start. Donations
and tax-exempt status are additional issues.

I'm putting my "general" notes underneath the Developer Sprint:
http://drupal.org/node/18269

I've got a page on governance that is going to go up, which
essentially recommends setting up some working groups not just for
development (e.g. Metadata, Media & File, etc.) but also for
management. We already partially have this with, for example, the
Documentation mailing list, but we need a few more. The Community
group would handle non-technical community issues.

See my notes, then lets keep this momentum going!

--
Boris Mann
http://www.bryght.com