Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for Council candidates: Future of the Foundation

[Aaron Bauman <bman@gentoo.org>]

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On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 06:30:23AM +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> Dear council candidates,
> 
> I'd like to know what opinions you hold about the future of the
> Foundation. I intend to publicly post the same question for the
> Foundation Trustee candidates when that election starts.
> 
> Q1: What are your feels on the recent history of the Foundation? (last
> 2-3 years)
>

Hi, Robin. I believe the last 2-3 years have been slow but productive in
righting ourselves with the IRS. Additionally, I believe the current
board of trustees truly understands the role of the foundation within
the community. We are here to support financially and legally to ensure
that things such an infra is paid for, no copyright infringement,
developers have items needed (e.g. NitroKey), etc.

> Q2: What should the Foundation do more of?
> 

As I have stated personally amongst the trustees, I would like to
explore sponsoring developers to open source conferences and finding
other ways to expend our income in a socially and fiscally responsible
manner for supporting our purpose as a distribution.

> Q3: What should the Foundation do less of?
> 

We definitely need to codify the role of the foundation amongst the
distribution to future-proof any attempts or thoughts of overthrowing
the council. I personally believe an easy win for this is to modify the
by-laws delineating this role and empowering the council. This is not to
suggest that the council is not empowered now, but simply ensuring that
any attempts of "sea lawyers" to think they can suggest such courses of
actions is nullified.

> Q4: What should become of the Foundation?
> * something not the following list at all?
> * long-term continue to exist as-is non-501c6 state
> * finish 501c6 state
> * convert to 501c3 in some way
> * join an umbrella?
> ** what should the selection criterion be?
> * disband entirely
> ** where should the financial holdings go?
> ** where should the copyright & trademark holdings go?
> ** what actions will be impacted by this?
> 

My personal opinion has been publically stated already and amongst the
trustees. I interpret one cornerstone of the social contract as ensuring
that Gentoo remains autonomous. I have reservations that an overarching
"umbrella" could/would make decisions against the overall ideals of our
community. As an example:

Umbrella X decides that all subordinate projects must accept License-X
for their project. License X is against our "core" values/social
contract. We (Gentoo) must now obtain membership or some voting capacity
to override such a decision *outside* the scope of our usual internal
governance.

As such, I believe we ought to reincorporate ourselves as a 501c3 for the tax
benefit, retain bookkeeping/tax specialists, and ensure that we codify
the role of the council, foundation, etc for the community. Of course,
there is a *lot* of items to be unpacked here for discussion. Namely,
financial impacts of retaining such services vs income etc.

> -- 
> Robin Hugh Johnson
> Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Treasurer
> E-Mail   : robbat2@gentoo.org
> GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
> GnuPG FP : 7D0B3CEB E9B85B1F 825BCECF EE05E6F6 A48F6136



-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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