[tdf-discuss] Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Splitting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HREUNITING the Community?

Hi,

Greg Stein wrote on 2011-06-05 20.03:

> > That point has been repeaded over and over again, but basically you are
> > saying everyone "Do not set up your own foundation at all, we alreadyh have
> > enough."
>
> I don't know that Robert B-D said that, or anybody else. *I* certainly
> said it, and strongly believe it. But that's just me :-)

so, why don't the ASF, the Mozilla Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation 
and the GNOME Foundation unite? :-)

Sorry for the provocative question, I just wanted to state "But we 
already have a foundation" is no good argument for me. However, I think 
the point why we hear these topics is another one, being some false 
rumors spreading, so I hope I can clarify some things.

> Ah! I didn't know that the current sponsor enabled that. Good stuff. I
> had thought you were further away...

There is no Foundation as German legal entity yet, but we are right 
before creating it. We have collected 50.000 € capital stock plus about 
45.000 € in further donations, specifically for a donation in Germany. 
Thousands of people from all over the world, developers, corporations 
and especially many, many end-users, have donated. They want a 
foundation, they want it in Germany, they want us to set this up - 
otherwise I doubt they would have donated so much money in such a short 
period of time. I think it's important to emphasize that most donors 
have been individuals, so it's not that two or three corporations have 
donated all the money.

Second is, we already have a well-established German entity. It's an 
association, not a foundation, but the association has been in existence 
since 2004. We have about 170 business and private members and have 
basically taken care of many legal aspects of the German community so 
far. Plus, we have supported international events, created 
infrastructure, and we have organized two times a congress for business 
and administration with about 100 participants each time, including 
major players. With the legal backing of the association, we have 
organized trade show appearences with partners and produced DVDs. Even 
governmental entities, ministries and large corporations see us as one 
of *the* point of contact for free office software in Germany. So, it's 
not an unimportant little entity, but rather a powerful entity, with 
existing governance, and we are publically acknowledged as non-profit, 
and donations to us are tax-deductible.

So, in a nutshell, stating there was no entity able to handle things is 
simply *WRONG*. It is no foundation yet, but that's about it. And, for 
the foundation, we are close to setting this up, too. We expect to hand 
in the statutes to the ministry the next week or the week thereafter.

This might not affect other topics, but honestly, I think the perception 
of what already is in existence is not clear enough for many parties on 
this list. :-) Hope I could shed some light on it...

Florian

--
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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