Loomio

Organization Structure

PP Pirate Praveen Public Seen by 741

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.

  1. 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).
  2. We can create email accounts for official members
  3. Any time contribution to Free Software should be enough to get a membership (be it coding, design, support, publicity etc)
  4. Their contribution should be vouched by existing members (we can have initial members from this loomio group/riot group/mailing list).
  5. This structure can help us make official statements with everyone given a fair opportunity to comment.
  6. 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:

  1. https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/TrustedOrganizationCriteria has criteria debian uses to select trusted organizations.

  2. https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor/Organizations has list of organizations trusted by debian.

  3. https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-9 is the section about trusted organizations.

Update (10/02/2017):

Preamble:

  1. Free Software Community of India is a collective of Free Software (sometimes also called as Open Source Software) users, advocates and developers.
  2. We maintain communication and collaboration infrastructure for everyone that respects their freedom and privacy.
  3. We depend on donations and community manpower to run the infrastructure.
  4. We maintain a list of Free Software communities and offer sub domains of fsug.in or fosscommunity.in
  5. We mentor Free Software enthusiasts to become Free Software contributors.
  6. We provide GNU/Linux installation and configuration support via online messaging groups.
PP

Poll Created Wed 18 Sep 2013 8:16AM

Make SMC our legal home Closed Wed 2 Oct 2013 11:47AM

Outcome
by Pirate Praveen Tue 25 Apr 2017 5:22AM

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 PP S AS MK BC NAJ PS
Abstain 20.0% 2 SK MKT
Disagree 10.0% 1 AKS
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 141 J NV P RD S AA SA JN AP SAJ DU A JI AR S JB M NK SA P

10 of 151 people have participated (6%)

PP

Pirate Praveen
Agree
Wed 18 Sep 2013 8:18AM

This will ensure our assets will be maintained properly and we can continue building free communication infrastructures.

PS

Pavithran S
Agree
Wed 18 Sep 2013 12:34PM

yes it would be easy to accept money .

SK

Sooraj Kenoth
Block
Wed 18 Sep 2013 4:40PM

I don't think it as good idea, as SMC is entirely different entity with different objectives.

SK

Sooraj Kenoth
Abstain
Wed 18 Sep 2013 4:49PM

I don't think it as good idea, as SMC is entirely different entity with different objectives.

MKT

Manu Krishnan T V
Abstain
Wed 18 Sep 2013 5:05PM

SMC's major area of work is limited to a geographic location. But this can be much wider.

AS

Anish Sheela
Agree
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.

AS

Anish Sheela
Agree
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.

S

StultuS
Agree
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.

BC

Balasankar C
Agree
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.

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