From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from pine.sfconservancy.org (pine.sfconservancy.org [IPv6:2001:4801:7822:103:be76:4eff:fe10:7c55]) by sourceware.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 031593858D1E for ; Fri, 2 Sep 2022 18:51:58 +0000 (GMT) DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.1 sourceware.org 031593858D1E Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=sfconservancy.org Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=sfconservancy.org Received: from wn (unknown [IPv6:2601:1c0:ce00:e2e0::936]) (Authenticated sender: pono) by pine.sfconservancy.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 6AA49E479; Fri, 2 Sep 2022 18:51:56 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=sfconservancy.org; s=pine; t=1662144716; bh=AmwQVYKv8Fx5U00TRhjoMlOJevx+F5v7cSYyhHavraw=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=lvrNhJzX0kNg7W7w42YT4C83ChLaT6QwjvIrpvDKcRCaSiU4h9UcxXlaSqHIDhh1A ax/y8tzoOpGXsrhbUn9NrkgjNioR96n9/GzmgtRTioV9lqJBL8PjiOpZjhJpsm1gHt R85/Zr+41tjYuxsRWHhDflCi4eOBGUEJ6lD9+5I1qmxbSwAwZG7GqkHeFeJS+/MywM HMJKdiEfDcfumIK0h4Bg8qRX/D1sMlEvpuklF5tR9xPgMoETXMI2s2BurTqAHAvq7G eqd0D3CtBZUkVWyQz481jAeajT82sm72Hem3KhXUzdPzUj+BKiVC3l3+lwWv+v8pVa yFWigQPKfv0AQ== Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2022 11:51:54 -0700 From: Daniel Pono Takamori To: Mark Wielaard Cc: Overseers mailing list , "Jose E. Marchesi" , "Bradley M. Kuhn" Subject: Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project Message-ID: References: <87ler4qcmo.fsf@gnu.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,DKIM_VALID_EF,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS,TXREP,T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on server2.sourceware.org List-Id: Mark Wielaard wrote yesterday today: > I CCed Daniel and Bradley from the Conservancy to correct any mistakes > in my description of the procedures. Thanks, Mark, your summary of SFC's processes are basically correct. What I'd like to add is that we've already pointed SFC's Evaluation Committee to this thread — and we're confident they will all review the discussion here as part of the evaluation of Sourceware for membership and fiscal sponsorship by SFC. Organizationally, we believe in transparency by default for FOSS projects, and this is even more important for community decision making. We encouraged Sourceware to discuss their application publicly. Almost ten years ago (before my time), SFC participated in a discussion with the VertX project (and many others) when VertX was choosing a non-profit fiscal sponsor: https://groups.google.com/g/vertx/c/WIuY5M6RluM/m/LC_6WkTaQN0J We learned from that experience (and other similar experiences) that public discussion on a project's mailing list about the options available for fiscal sponsorship, and frank discussion by the project's leadership about what fiscal sponsorship organization best fits their needs as a project are essential. These days there are *so many* great options for fiscal sponsorship. There are for-profit fiscal-sponsorship-as-a-service companies like OpenCollective. There are corporate-business-interest-focused trade association fiscal sponsors like Eclipse (where VertX ultimately ended up). Then, there are charities like SFC. All these options exist because projects' needs and culture differ. We think fiscal sponsorship sign-up is the best time for a FOSS community to do some identity-searching and figure out what organizational structure best fits their project culture. When governance hasn't been explicitly defined, these growing experiences are the times when communities need to reflect and embed their values into their governance structure. And, in a true FOSS way, we believe this should be done in public, community discussion. We also post an FAQ for projects (or other fiscal sponsors looking for information) that are considering applying: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ In particular you can review the standard fiscal sponsorship agreement (FSA) that we use https://sfconservancy.org/docs/sponsorship-agreement-template.pdf that might give you a better sense of the kind of governance and fiscal/ legal oversight we provide. SFC's interest in this regard is to preserve the creation of free software with free software tools and to preserve community driven development. Please let me know if you have any questions or are curious about the differences between SFC and other fiscal sponsors. Sincerely, Pono, Community Organizer at Software Freedom Conservancy