Thoughts from someone involved in projects with various governance / legal
arrangements.

On Friday, January 14, 2011 09:58:04 pm Daniel Stenberg wrote:
> A - I think our project runs really well already. We have lots of fine
> infrastructure working and we have a healthy stream of new
> contributors, good patches, mailing list discussions and regulars keeping
> along.
This is really orthogonal to being part of the conservancy. The conservancy
wouldn't really help much with any (except maybe infrastructure) of that. It
certainly doesn't help with generating good patches or happy users.

> B - The Software Freedom Conservancy is a US organization and I know there
> have been concerns expressed in the past about putting (too much)
> project materials and "weight" in the US and what risks and downsides that
> might carry on for us who aren't in the US. So all that tax-excempt and
> stuff are only for US companies and they basically can only provide good
> services within the US. Our project has a very large share of contributors
> and existance outside of the US.
If this is a big issue in the decision (and I really doubt it is - the next
point is more critical), then you could consider a "sibling" organisation
(e.g. there is a similar "SFC France").

> C - We don't have a particular need for that much of what they offer.
I think this is the key issue, and I certainly don't disagree with the
reasoning.

IMO, handling money is the main discriminator. Note that even small amounts of
money (donations, "mentor" money from GSoC) can soon become a management issue
that something like the conservancy can help with, but if you don't have that
issue, I can't see anything that would need such a structure.

Brad
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Received on 2011-01-14