ReactOS Foundation 501c3 Status - Approved

[Steven Edwards]

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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[Alex Ionescu]

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

[Aleksey Bragin]

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:
>
>  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
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.com
>  http://reactos.com:8080/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

[Steven Edwards]

--- Aleksey Bragin <aleksey(a)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?
>  
>  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. 
Yes I think you and Alex are right. We should budget more of whatever money we get for
that.

>   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. 
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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[Royce Mitchell III]

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.

[James Tabor]

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

[Jonathan Wilson]

>   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 :( )