Hi, Just to let everyone know we are now approved to be a 501c3 org in the United States meaning that we can give a tax deduction for any contributions received for donations to the Foundation. I am in process of trying to get my paperwork together now to come up with a plan to move forward as I have never done this before and its been a learning process. Sorry its taken so damn long......
I would like to propose that we get something up rather quickly on foundation.reactos.org and review/amend the draft bylaws as needed as well as have our first real meeting after Jason and I have discussed off list drafting a new budget plan for the following expenses.
Bounty System Retainer for Legal and Accounting Supplementation of Hosting Costs Administrative Assistant Reserve Fund
Just to give you a idea I am wanting to budget whatever income we might have in the following way
80% developers/bounties 5% reserve fund (Mutual Funds, Savings, Etc) 5% legal reserve and retainer costs 5% supplement hosting and misc expenses (expos etc) 5% part-to-full time administrative assistant to help me manage paper work as I suck at it.
Prior board meetings mainly consisted of me telephoning each board member upon the initial incorporation and we have not really moved forward since that time. Now that we are all nice and legal its time to hit the ground running. Currently our board of directors consists of long time developers to ReactOS and Wine
Steven Edwards, Jason Filby, Alexandre Julliard, Brian Palmer and Rex Jolliff.
I would like to get community feedback as part of our bylaw amending process on the current status of the board and when/if we should hold elections and restructure. Also from people that agreed to be on the board. Do you still want to do it? Does anyone else? Etc....
Thanks Steven
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Steven Edwards wrote:
Hi, Just to let everyone know we are now approved to be a 501c3 org in the United States meaning that we can give a tax deduction for any contributions received for donations to the Foundation. I am in process of trying to get my paperwork together now to come up with a plan to move forward as I have never done this before and its been a learning process. Sorry its taken so damn long......
Congratulations, and thanks so much for your hard work on this issue! You deserve a big clap of applause.
I would like to propose that we get something up rather quickly on foundation.reactos.org and review/amend the draft bylaws as needed as well as have our first real meeting after Jason and I have discussed off list drafting a new budget plan for the following expenses.
Bounty System Retainer for Legal and Accounting Supplementation of Hosting Costs Administrative Assistant Reserve Fund
I totally agree.
Just to give you a idea I am wanting to budget whatever income we might have in the following way
80% developers/bounties 5% reserve fund (Mutual Funds, Savings, Etc) 5% legal reserve and retainer costs 5% supplement hosting and misc expenses (expos etc) 5% part-to-full time administrative assistant to help me manage paper work as I suck at it.
Two issues I see here:
1) Developers. Do you mean that each developer will be paid? How will this be done? equally shared? Not to sound like an ass, but there may be times when a developer does absolutely nothing (read: me for the next month), while someone else is hacking away 100KLOC of code. Or someone that generally only does little fixes (which can be really useful, and is all the useful time he can offer due to work/family/school) versus someone which already has assured income and spends 24 hours a day working on Reactos. Would it be fair to pay everyone the same amount of money? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding the issue, but I just want to be fair. Besides, I'm sure many developers might want to refuse getting paid. Working for free is sometimes a personal choice, and the offers certain tangible and psycoligcal advantages. I don't know about others, but I myself would feel bad in many ways to receive money by working on ReactOS. I would feel as if any bugs ormistakes that I make now have monetary losses associated with them.
2) I think expos should get more then 5%. An expo of 4 people would cost around 2000$ (assuming 150$/night * 3 nights, plus food and other needs, *4 people). Now at minimum we'll probably want to attend a North American and a European conference, meaning 4000$. The European one is bound to have more then 4 people anyways, so with 6 people, it'll up the cost to 6000$. 5% means that we would need 80 000$ in donations. Seems a lot to me at this stage. Then again, we probably won't want to pay the full cost of an expo at this point, but whatever, I'm just giving ideas and I hope they help!
Prior board meetings mainly consisted of me telephoning each board member upon the initial incorporation and we have not really moved forward since that time. Now that we are all nice and legal its time to hit the ground running. Currently our board of directors consists of long time developers to ReactOS and Wine
Steven Edwards, Jason Filby, Alexandre Julliard, Brian Palmer and Rex Jolliff.
I would like to get community feedback as part of our bylaw amending process on the current status of the board and when/if we should hold elections and restructure. Also from people that agreed to be on the board. Do you still want to do it? Does anyone else? Etc....
I would love to be on the board. I think I have some pretty good ideas for moving forward, and it'll be a good short break from coding when I'll happen.
Thanks Steven
Best Regards, Alex Ionescu
Hi, it's so long-awaited result that it's even hard to believe in it now ;-)
Alex raised a few very important topics, let me add to it: 1) Developer payment - this question must be worked out thoroughly - if we're going with only the bounty system, it's the easiest to maintain. However with paid-developers, as Alex pointed out, creates a problem - how to differentiate each one's "salary". There are two generally two ways to get the development process done: First of all create development path, mark milestones, estimate roughly number of people and number of hours to complete each part. Then: a) pay developers monthly agreed full-time or part-time salary, and developer promises relatively strict timeframe for reaching every major milestone. If not reaching, then the developers salary might be reconsidered somewhen. Or might be not. b) pay developers for completed parts - this allows to get rid of "fulltime" or "parttime", since dev is actually paid for reaching the end result.
b is actually close to bouny-system. a would be cool, but only if developer wishes this way.
What's other's opinion about this?
2) I agree with Alex that sponsoring expos travelling would be great (though $150 per night just for hotel sounds like a bit too much for me, but maybe american prices are higher than europe's), it's the main thing after developers payment.
3) Board - what does it mean? Will it define main strategic decisions? If so, wouldn't it be fair to do it as we already started - by open voting process amongst all active (=having commit-access in svn) developers? I just don't know about it - if it's some legal thing, then I'm not really interested, and I would leave this to you :-), but if it's for making decisions about reactos development, it's structure etc, then I'd think that most of ros-devs should be involved in this process. Am I right? Also does being a board-member will mean generally distancing from actual development? Or it's kind of the same thing as being coordinator, when it's possible (and mostly needed) to be developer and coordinate some effort, like translating.
Again - it's so great this process is starting to move forward, I'm very excited about it, certainly big thanks goes to Steven for not giving up ;-)
With the best regards, Aleksey Bragin.
Steven Edwards wrote:
Hi, Just to let everyone know we are now approved to be a 501c3 org in the United States meaning that we can give a tax deduction for any contributions received for donations to the Foundation. I am in process of trying to get my paperwork together now to come up with a plan to move forward as I have never done this before and its been a learning process. Sorry its taken so damn long......
Congratulations, and thanks so much for your hard work on this issue! You deserve a big clap of applause.
I would like to propose that we get something up rather quickly on foundation.reactos.org and review/amend the draft bylaws as needed as well as have our first real meeting after Jason and I have discussed off list drafting a new budget plan for the following expenses.
Bounty System Retainer for Legal and Accounting Supplementation of Hosting Costs Administrative Assistant Reserve Fund
I totally agree.
Just to give you a idea I am wanting to budget whatever income we might have in the following way
80% developers/bounties 5% reserve fund (Mutual Funds, Savings, Etc) 5% legal reserve and retainer costs 5% supplement hosting and misc expenses (expos etc) 5% part-to-full time administrative assistant to help me manage paper work as I suck at it.
Two issues I see here:
- Developers. Do you mean that each developer will be paid? How will this
be done? equally shared? Not to sound like an ass, but there may be times when a developer does absolutely nothing (read: me for the next month), while someone else is hacking away 100KLOC of code. Or someone that generally only does little fixes (which can be really useful, and is all the useful time he can offer due to work/family/school) versus someone which already has assured income and spends 24 hours a day working on Reactos. Would it be fair to pay everyone the same amount of money? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding the issue, but I just want to be fair. Besides, I'm sure many developers might want to refuse getting paid. Working for free is sometimes a personal choice, and the offers certain tangible and psycoligcal advantages. I don't know about others, but I myself would feel bad in many ways to receive money by working on ReactOS. I would feel as if any bugs ormistakes that I make now have monetary losses associated with them.
- I think expos should get more then 5%. An expo of 4 people would cost
around 2000$ (assuming 150$/night * 3 nights, plus food and other needs, *4 people). Now at minimum we'll probably want to attend a North American and a European conference, meaning 4000$. The European one is bound to have more then 4 people anyways, so with 6 people, it'll up the cost to 6000$. 5% means that we would need 80 000$ in donations. Seems a lot to me at this stage. Then again, we probably won't want to pay the full cost of an expo at this point, but whatever, I'm just giving ideas and I hope they help!
Prior board meetings mainly consisted of me telephoning each board member upon the initial incorporation and we have not really moved forward since that time. Now that we are all nice and legal its time to hit the ground running. Currently our board of directors consists of long time developers to ReactOS and Wine
Steven Edwards, Jason Filby, Alexandre Julliard, Brian Palmer and Rex Jolliff.
I would like to get community feedback as part of our bylaw amending process on the current status of the board and when/if we should hold elections and restructure. Also from people that agreed to be on the board. Do you still want to do it? Does anyone else? Etc....
I would love to be on the board. I think I have some pretty good ideas for moving forward, and it'll be a good short break from coding when I'll happen.
Thanks Steven
Best Regards, Alex Ionescu _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.com http://reactos.com:8080/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
--- Aleksey Bragin aleksey@studiocerebral.com wrote:
b is actually close to bouny-system. a would be cool, but only if developer wishes this way.
Right now I just want to focus on the bounty system.
What's other's opinion about this?
- I agree with Alex that sponsoring expos travelling would be great (though
$150 per night just for hotel sounds like a bit too much for me, but maybe american prices are higher than europe's), it's the main thing after developers payment.
Yes I think you and Alex are right. We should budget more of whatever money we get for that.
- Board - what does it mean? Will it define main strategic decisions? If
so, wouldn't it be fair to do it as we already started - by open voting process amongst all active (=having commit-access in svn) developers? I just don't know about it - if it's some legal thing, then I'm not really interested, and I would leave this to you :-), but if it's for making decisions about reactos development, it's structure etc, then I'd think that most of ros-devs should be involved in this process. Am I right? Also does being a board-member will mean generally distancing from actual development? Or it's kind of the same thing as being coordinator, when it's possible (and mostly needed) to be developer and coordinate some effort, like translating.
Yes its mainly a matter of legalism. There has to be some controling party to manage the books and such. The way that Jason and I planned it was that the board would have no real power other than to do the will of the majority of the developers. The board members could also be recalled and appointed by vote.
Again - it's so great this process is starting to move forward, I'm very excited about it, certainly big thanks goes to Steven for not giving up ;-)
Thanks to everyone that has contributed thus far and has stayed on me to make sure all of the paperwork is moving in the right places.
Thanks Steven
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Steven Edwards wrote:
I would like to propose that we get something up rather quickly on foundation.reactos.org and review/amend the draft bylaws as needed as well as have our first real meeting after Jason and I have discussed off list drafting a new budget plan for the following expenses.
I think it's important to draw a clear line as to the responsibilities of the board as opposed to things that should be decided by all commiters ( vs things that the community at large should be invited into ).
80% developers/bounties 5% reserve fund (Mutual Funds, Savings, Etc) 5% legal reserve and retainer costs 5% supplement hosting and misc expenses (expos etc) 5% part-to-full time administrative assistant to help me manage paper work as I suck at it.
I'm not sure percentages are going to serve you very well here.
As far as bounties go, I can think of only one fair system:
Basically there would be two types of bounties:
1) "Directed" bounties: If someone donates money towards the completion of a purpose, the money must be made available for that purpose.
2) "General Funds" bounties: These are bounties created from the budget above. The way I propose this should work is as follows: Anyone with commit access can "propose" a bounty. The board would be responsible for reviewing the bounty, and if it looks good to them ( possibly amending it some ), they would submit it to the body of commiters for approval. Obviously the board would be responsible for reigning in the bounties from going over budget.
Prior board meetings mainly consisted of me telephoning each board member upon the initial incorporation and we have not really moved forward since that time. Now that we are all nice and legal its time to hit the ground running. Currently our board of directors consists of long time developers to ReactOS and Wine
Steven Edwards, Jason Filby, Alexandre Julliard, Brian Palmer and Rex Jolliff.
I would like to get community feedback as part of our bylaw amending process on the current status of the board and when/if we should hold elections and restructure. Also from people that agreed to be on the board. Do you still want to do it? Does anyone else? Etc....
I would like to be involved in the by-law development process, or at least be able to review them and give some feedback. I would be willing to serve on the board, if I'm wanted.
Hi! Steven Edwards wrote:
Hi, Just to let everyone know we are now approved to be a 501c3 org in the United States meaning that we can give a tax deduction for any contributions received for donations to the Foundation. I am in process of trying to get my paperwork together now to come up with a plan to move forward as I have never done this before and its been a learning process. Sorry its taken so damn long......
I would like to propose that we get something up rather quickly on foundation.reactos.org and review/amend the draft bylaws as needed as well as have our first real meeting after Jason and I have discussed off list drafting a new budget plan for the following expenses.
Bounty System Retainer for Legal and Accounting Supplementation of Hosting Costs Administrative Assistant Reserve Fund
Just to give you a idea I am wanting to budget whatever income we might have in the following way
80% developers/bounties 5% reserve fund (Mutual Funds, Savings, Etc) 5% legal reserve and retainer costs 5% supplement hosting and misc expenses (expos etc) 5% part-to-full time administrative assistant to help me manage paper work as I suck at it.
Paying developers? Hum?
I don't want to be the bad guy here, but this could push people away from the project. It would be like going back to five years ago when ROS had no GUI just a command console. Everyone will wait for five or so developers to fix things, and trust me it does happen that way in the real world. The back log will kick their asses.
Prior board meetings mainly consisted of me telephoning each board member upon the initial incorporation and we have not really moved forward since that time. Now that we are all nice and legal its time to hit the ground running. Currently our board of directors consists of long time developers to ReactOS and Wine
Steven Edwards, Jason Filby, Alexandre Julliard, Brian Palmer and Rex Jolliff.
I would like to get community feedback as part of our bylaw amending process on the current status of the board and when/if we should hold elections and restructure. Also from people that agreed to be on the board. Do you still want to do it? Does anyone else? Etc....
Thanks Steven
Now I have to ask, where does the money come from? If the ORG has no money, I guess it should produce a competing distribution CD. This could make M$ happy, so M$ would have a target to sue at. Also everyone on the board would become a target as well.
Paranoid, James
Now I have to ask, where does the money come from? If the ORG has no money, I guess it should produce a competing distribution CD. This could make M$ happy, so M$ would have a target to sue at. Also everyone on the board would become a target as well.
The way to avoid being sued by microsoft (or at least sucessfully sued) is not to violate microsoft Copyrights, Trademarks or Patents. (we have to be especially carefull what with large chunks of windows out there in the form of the leaked NT4 and 2000 source dumps) And not to use any information obtained from microsoft under NDA.
Although, being Microsoft, just suing us (regardless of whether they have a case or not) could be enough to seriously damage the project :( )
-
Aleksey Bragin -
Alex Ionescu -
James Tabor -
Jonathan Wilson -
Royce Mitchell III -
Steven Edwards