Hosting under the SFC umbrella

["Yann E. MORIN" <yann dot morin dot 1998 at free dot fr>]

Hello All!

Some time ago, I asked the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) if they
would be willing to host the crosstool-NG project. They now have
answered, and we've been offered membership:
    https://sourceware.org/ml/crossgcc/2014-04/msg00013.html

For those of you who do not know, SFC is a not-for-profit organisation
whose goal is the advancement of Free Software. Their website clearly
explains what they're doing:

    http://sfconservancy.org/

    Software Freedom Conservancy is a not-for-profit organization that
    helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open
    Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit
    home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS
    developers to focus on what they do best â writing and improving
    FLOSS for the general public â while Conservancy takes care of the
    projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development
    and documentation.

There are quite a number of very well-known projects hosted at SFC, of
which:

    BusyBox, Git, Inkscape, Mercurial, PyPy, Samba, SWIG, uClibc, Wine


This offer of membership is just an offer; crosstool-NG is not yet a
member project of SFC. We must first discuss whether to accept or not
this offer, and if we accept, under what terms we will join SFC.


We now have some questions to answer before we get hosted under the
SFC's umbrella. All contributors to the crosstool-NG project, whether
they contributed code and/or documentation, and/or helped on the mailing
list and/or the IRC channel, as well as users of the crosstool-NG
project, are encouraged to answer those questions, and participate in
the discussion.

The SFC proposal comes with a template of an agreement we'd have to
sign. This template is just that: a template. I propose we use it as a
basis for our discussions. The template is available there:
    https://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/ConservancyFSATemplate.pdf


----

First and foremost, do we want the crosstool-NG project to be hosted
by the SFC, at all?

Before you answer this question, please be sure to review what SFC
does, and whether that's what you believe the crosstool-NG project
needs.


----

SFC wants the project to have (in their own words) a Project Leadership
Committee (PLC). The PLC is in charge of managing the project, serves
as the interface between the project and SFC, and should be at least
three persons.

We currently have no such thing as a PLC, so we must create one. I
suggest we use the terminology of SFC to name this the "Crosstool-NG
Project Leadership Committee" (CPLC for short.)

As to how to form the CPLC, my preference would go to the second form
of committee, the "Self-Perpetuating Committee, w/ avoiding employees
of same company serving together" with three seats. If you have another
suggestion, do not hesitate to say so.


Those interested in joining the CPLC are encouraged to say so. Others
are encouraged to name those they would like to see serve on the CPLC,
with either of those statements:

  - to run for a seat on the CPLC, and cast a vote at the same time:

    I, FIRST-NAME LAST-NAME, run for a seat on the CPLC.

  - to nominate someone for the CPLC, and cast a vote for that person:

    I, FIRST-NAME LAST-NAME, nominates FIRST-NAME LAST-NAME as
    a contender for a seat on the CPLC.

Each voting person can cast at most three votes. A vote is either a
run for a seat (a vote for oneself), or a nomination (a vote for
someone else.) If you've been nominated, but would prefer not to serve,
please say so.

The run is open until 2014-05-31 23:59:59 UTC. Date headers in the
emails will be observed to check the date limit has been respected.
The only exception will be to let people who did not explicitly run
for a seat but were nominated by others, refuse this nomination.

The three contenders that get the more votes by that time will get
to serve on the CPLC. If there is a tie between one or more contenders
by that time, I, as the current "Benevolent Dictator By Default",
will cast as many arbitrary votes as necessary to break the tie, but
only to break the tie. If there is less than three contenders by that
time, I will privately contact some contributors to ask them them if
they will be willing to join the CPLC, and will publish the results to
the list when the CPLC is complete. If it is not possible to get three
persons seating at the CPLC, we'll see with SFC what can be done to
resolve the situation.


As a side matter, we will have to define what the role of the CPLC is.
I suggest we put this aside for now, by simply stating the following:

    The "Crosstool-NG Project Leadership Committee" (CPLC) will take
    any action to further the advancement of crosstool-NG, in
    accordance to the agreement signed with SFC.

We can refine this definition later, in the course of the application.
SFC will most probably be able to help draft a proper definition.


----

SFC acts as a Fiscal Sponsor to the projects they host. What this means,
is that they are able to receive monetary donations to the project,
which the project can then spend for its activities (minus a percentage
kept by SFC for their own expenses at shepherding the project, which in
their proposal amounts to 10% of donations.)

The project so far was not able to receive donations, and I refused a
few offers over the years, because I did not want to conflate that with
my own money at the bank.

Currently, the crosstool-NG project has only one reason to spend money,
that is registering the two domain names, which I have so far paid with
my own money: crosstool-ng.org and crosstool-ng.net.

The server is a VM which Oregon State University - Open Source Lab
(OUSOSL, http://osuosl.org/ ) is hosting at no charge. OSUOSL is also a
non-profit organisation (an IRS 501(c)(3) ) like SFC. I believe it is
possible for a 501(c)(3) to transfer money to another 501(c)(3). If so,
then SFC would be able to donate to OSUOSL a part of the donations the
crosstool-NG project would receive.

It will be the responsibility of the CPLC to eventually decide what to
do with the donations, the above being only a suggestion.


----

Assets held by the project, that can be transferred to SFC.

  - domain names: the only assets so far are the domain names. They are
    currently registered until 2017-01-28. Should we join SFC, I will
    happily arrange to transfer the domain names to SFC.

  - copyright assignment: SFC does not require that a project assigns
    copyright to SFC for a project to join. I believe this should not
    be done for the crosstool-NG project, as I firmly believe that
    multiple copyright holders is better than a single copyright holder.
    Should some contributors prefer to assign their copyright to SFC,
    we'll see with SFC if it is possible to have a mixed solution, with
    some contributors actually assigning their copyright to SFC, while
    others retain their copyright.


----

Please, be sure to read all of this, plus the template agreement pointed
to, above. Feel free to ask any question, voice your suggestions, add
any point you think important, and discuss all of this: the above is not
final words, and must be discussed. Please keep all communications
public on the list.

Thank you again all for all your contributions!
Thank you SFC for your offer!

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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