Hi, On 12/1/20 4:10 AM, Syds Bearda wrote:
Hi all,
I've been reading up on the Foundation proposal and i wonder what is the current status?
I see a few outstanding issues since August 2020: 1) Discussions with SUSE regarding trademarking; 2) Decision on the legal format of the Foundation; 3) Board is waiting on people to come forward to help in the transition and analysis of legal + financial challenges.
1) Trademarking - Are these talks ongoing at the moment? (also who are having these talks?); - Has a lawyer looked at it already?; - Also what about paying an annual license to SUSE for the use of the openSUSE trademark while naming the Foundation "Geeko Foundation"? As why does the foundation need to be named after the distro's it's supporting? Why not keep it more general? I mean we have loads of different flavours of openSUSE with Leap, Tumblewed, Kubic, MicroOS, etc. Maybe in the future even other distro's will come our way that doe not bear the name openSUSE <xxx>..
These talks as with most of the talks have stalled due to some continuing changes within senior engineering leadership at SUSE. As the board we are planning to recommence these discussions in the new year. In the name vote earlier in the year the community gave a strong desire to keep the openSUSE name. We see openSUSE as more then just some distro's but the name of the broader project. Currently SUSE grants the openSUSE board control over the trademarks related to openSUSE, this gives us the best of both worlds in that we have control but at the same time don't have to cover the costs of going to court to defend the trademark. Because of these costs etc we have not necessarily been pushing for the foundation to take ownership of the trademarks straight away. What we would like, however is a contract where by if SUSE's management and direction changed and they no longer wished to support openSUSE then the trademarks would be transferred to the foundation. While this is unlikely when setting up a foundation we need to be prepared for anything that could reasonably happen in the next 20-30 years or longer. An additional complication to this is there has been questions from SUSE's legal team about whether 2 different entities could hold the SUSE and openSUSE trademarks and compete in the same market. The board did seek legal advice on this matter which was that is was possible and there are other examples of such arrangements. If we come to an agreement on these issues then it is almost certain that we would register "The openSUSE Foundation" if we couldn't then we would need to look at another name and in the future there could be discussions around rebranding the project.
2) Legal Format - I see 3 options; Foundation or e.V. if going with German Law, or a different countries type of foundation (maybe a different EU country..); - Has a Lawyer already drawn up the required documents?
The main option we are looking at is a German Stiftungen it allows significantly more flexibility in setting up the organizational structure, in particular it allows for a charter that cannot be changed giving some guarantee to SUSE that people couldn't take over the foundation and do something completely different. This is another thing that we would need agreement on between SUSE and the community before we get to writing contracts. The other major thing that needs to be resolved before we get to contracts is funding. Our advice is that the additional reporting requirements would be too much to expect volunteers to do and that the foundation would need to likely employ someone part time in that role. When the board started the foundation proposal again one thing that became clear to us was without an agreement on funding for such a position it would be unwise for the board to recommend creating a foundation. At the same time a foundation could save SUSE significant money so we just need to write a good business case here.
3) Transition team - have some people stepped forward?; - is there already a working group who is having regular meetings with minutes and action-points?
At the moment there hasn't been much interest outside people on the board. Into the new year we will need to write proper business cases and proposals and help writing and reviewing those will be much appreciated. As we start that process again in the new year we will be sure to post here asking for help.
Also i would like to step forward to help in the transition team on the financial side. I'm a financial controller with a MSc in Accountancy and I've worked in international environments and with not-for-profit organisations in the past (including helping in setting up a German gGmbH).
That experience will certainly be useful. Certainly I have some idea of the system in Australia but much less about the German systems. Thanks -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B