Organization Structure
I propose we create a constitution for ourselves and define membership and responsibilities.
Also we can use Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (http://smc.org.in) as a legal custodian of our assets similar to how SPI handles assets and financial transactions for debian project.
Update (09/02/2017): We need to revisit this thread now and finish this task of defining a structure.
- Each sub team like poddery.com maintainers or git.fosscommunity.in should be able to take technical decisions independently. We can have them like special teams in debian (FTP masters, release team etc).
- We can create email accounts for official members
- Any time contribution to Free Software should be enough to get a membership (be it coding, design, support, publicity etc)
- Their contribution should be vouched by existing members (we can have initial members from this loomio group/riot group/mailing list).
- This structure can help us make official statements with everyone given a fair opportunity to comment.
- Ownership of assets like domains could be given to legal entities like SMC. Just like debian, we can have multiple organizations as trusted organizations to keep assets. We can ask other groups like DFF, SFLC, DAKF etc
Basically we need ensure we can sustain these services even if the current maintainers become inactive (I want to make myself redundant).
Further reading:
https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/TrustedOrganizationCriteria has criteria debian uses to select trusted organizations.
https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor/Organizations has list of organizations trusted by debian.
https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-9 is the section about trusted organizations.
Update (10/02/2017):
Preamble:
- Free Software Community of India is a collective of Free Software (sometimes also called as Open Source Software) users, advocates and developers.
- We maintain communication and collaboration infrastructure for everyone that respects their freedom and privacy.
- We depend on donations and community manpower to run the infrastructure.
- We maintain a list of Free Software communities and offer sub domains of fsug.in or fosscommunity.in
- We mentor Free Software enthusiasts to become Free Software contributors.
- We provide GNU/Linux installation and configuration support via online messaging groups.
Poll Created Wed 18 Sep 2013 8:16AM
Make SMC our legal home Closed Wed 2 Oct 2013 11:47AM
We are using SMC for our legal backing.
Yes - We can assign legal ownership of our assets (domians, servers etc) and authorize accepting money on our behalf (we did this already for savepoddery.com).
No - I don't agree to this proposal.
Results
Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
---|---|---|---|---|
|
Agree | 70.0% | 7 | |
Abstain | 20.0% | 2 | ||
Disagree | 10.0% | 1 | ||
Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
Undecided | 0% | 141 |
10 of 151 people have participated (6%)
Pirate Praveen
Wed 18 Sep 2013 8:18AM
This will ensure our assets will be maintained properly and we can continue building free communication infrastructures.
Pavithran S
Wed 18 Sep 2013 12:34PM
yes it would be easy to accept money .
Sooraj Kenoth
Wed 18 Sep 2013 4:40PM
I don't think it as good idea, as SMC is entirely different entity with different objectives.
Sooraj Kenoth
Wed 18 Sep 2013 4:49PM
I don't think it as good idea, as SMC is entirely different entity with different objectives.
Manu Krishnan T V
Wed 18 Sep 2013 5:05PM
SMC's major area of work is limited to a geographic location. But this can be much wider.
Anish Sheela
Wed 18 Sep 2013 6:57PM
Its a pain to start and maintain a community. Better to keep backing from SMC. I think keeping separate logical accounts would be great.
Anish Sheela
Wed 18 Sep 2013 6:57PM
Its a pain to start and maintain a legal entity. Better to keep backing from SMC. I think keeping separate logical accounts would be great.
StultuS
Sun 22 Sep 2013 6:43AM
SMC is already a registered society. so with a legal backing from smc ( handling money , tax , etc) will be definitely helpful. later when fosscommunity.in grow out of the box , we can always create a new legal structure.
Balasankar C
Sun 22 Sep 2013 7:17PM
I think it is ok to merge with SMC if and only if they are ok with it. We should never become a burden to SMC. We can always merge and fork na? So let's make SMC our legal home.