Following up a discussion we had in Copenhagen, what the legalities are to setup foundations in Europe vs. the US, we did some research to that matter for a couple of countries in Europe. The results can be found at
https://openacs.org/storage/download/Foundation%20Lega?version_id=98666.
What we should think about first though is what the foundations work would be, how it would benefit the community, what is it's main activity...
Hopefully we can start a discussion around this issue here in the community. Some ideas I have:
- The foundation could be the copyright holder of the OpenACS sourcecode. In case of (patent) conflicts and the like, the foundation would be the legal entity to fight, not the contributors of the code.
- The foundation could sponsor events around OpenACS, help to organize booth at conferences, coordinate the training efforts, prepare collaborative marketing material.
- The funding would come from the stakeholders in the community, in one way or another (time, money, in kind).
- The foundation would be the holder of the OpenACS.org domain as well as the computer running the system.
