[steering-discuss] Updates on Bylaws and Federal State

Hello,

here's a short update on the current status of our bylaws, and on the 
possible German federal states.

Bylaws:
Thanks to the wonderful support of our German community, we received 
lots of feedback with regards to the translated bylaws 
(http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/CommunityBylaws/de). Folks, thanks a 
lot, this was real helpful input! We're of course happy to get more 
feedback, but in order to move on, only mistakes or real bad wording 
should be changed at this state.

Statutes:
We've started the progress of working on the legal statutes. These will 
be different from the bylaws as the legal requirements are tight. Some 
things missing in the bylaws have to be in the statutes, other things 
mentioned in the bylaws do not fit into statutes. What we will do is to 
work on legally acceptable statutes, that then will be enhanced by 
policies, so the full spirit of the bylaws is retained. As soon as we 
have a first draft, we will share it. One point that we need to deal 
with is our membership definition. We will have to be precisely on what 
that means, and what rights and duties membership brings. Noteworthy is 
also that some other rules (like definition of the ESC) should probably 
not be in the statutes.

Federal State:
We also have some feedback with regards to the ideal German federal 
state to found the foundation in. The following list is without taking 
into account where we have active people at (which IMHO is a very 
crucial point).

	- Hamburg: Very liberal state. Even the reason for the foundation 
("Stiftungszweck") might be slightly changed under certain 
circumstances. Question is, if we want to have it that liberal.

	- Berlin: Has some different regulations than other federal states, 
with some advantages and disadvantages.

	- Hesse: As the person in charge has changed recently, it's 
undetermined if things will be as liberal as they have been in the past. 
Worth a try.

        - Bavaria: Might require an independent accountant, but not sure.

What should be possible is to have the foundation set up in one federal 
state, but have the office in another, as long as it is still in 
Germany. So, for example, we could set up the foundation in Berlin if 
this fits best to our plans, but have the office in Hesse or Bavaria, 
which could be more comfortable with regards to the location of active 
people.

European Foundation:
It is still unclear when and if the European foundation will be legally 
fixed, and how it would look like. We should take precautions so we can 
convert our foundation later on if desired, but details are hardly 
forseeable at the moment.

So, this was just an update, no need to act at the moment, we're working 
on this. By saing "me", let me tell I am only the messenger here. Thanks 
to the folks working on this in the background, you do a tremendous job!

Florian

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Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>
Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation
Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108
Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff

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