Summary of the LoCoTeam meeting, 2005-09-21

[freedoomer at mandragor.org]

> Yann -
>
> I'm not ruling out coming up with some sort of trademark license to
> allow the non-profit you want, but from your list of reasons:
>
>>  - Our servers now belong to noone.
>>  - The donations are actually on our personnal paypal account; if we
>>can't give them to an association we should pay taxes on it.
>>  - There is something called "CNIL" in France, an organisation to which
>>every website working with people's personal data have to declare
>>itself. The declaration is not the same if I declare the website being
>>mine, or being the organisation's.
>>  - There is a commercial entity who wants to give us money, but they
>> need
>>us to be a not for profit organisation to do this.
>>  - We are working with a cybercentre in the north of France who is
>>willing to help us distribute the cds, and to convince the city to give
>>us a small budget (which is, according to our contact there, possible),
>>we need an official entity, not only someone tellin "hi, i'm yann, i
>>need money" ;) btw I asked if we could get some thousands of cds short
>>after release time, is it possible?
>>
>>
> Every single one of those is addressed by the arrangement we talked
> about several weeks ago whereby the LoCo team works with the Ubuntu
> Foundation.

I'm kind of overbooked these last weeks, I'm afraid I don't remember this
arrangement... What does it stated?

>>You are suggesting we use the ubuntu foundation for these activities.
>>Actually we would prefer to have our own organisation because:
>>  - We need money for some of our activites (hosting, in a near future
>> cds
>>shipping, conferences..) - and as far as I know, the Ubuntu foundation
>>does not finance the locoteams, so we need our own budget, and
>>organisation to handle it.
>>
>>
> This is interesting, but I suspect there is a simple way to allow you to
> administer your own monies. Needing a budget certainly does not equate
> to needing a separate company/legal structure.  And a LoCo team can
> organise themselves in terms of positions of responsibility (who does
> what) without a company structure.
>
>>  - The Ubuntu Foundation does not exist yet;
>>
>>
> Not true, it does.

Legally, yes... but it might take a few more month before Ubuntu is run by
the foundation, doesn't it? whatever.

>>  - if possible we want to be able to do as much as possible without
>>needing the ubuntu foundation, as you have enough work without having to
>>deal with our problems. I think we would have a far better reactivity
>>that way. Communication with Canonical is far, far too complicated...
>>It's written on Ubuntu.com that we should ask trademarks@ for use the
>>name on banners; we had a conference 2 weeks ago, asked a month ago for
>>the authorisation, and never got it :/
>>
>>
> Sorry about that - there was a mix up on the trademark email with Mako's
> departure.  But again, I don't think setting up a new company addresses
> this.

I understand, it's not really important, we ended up using the name Ubuntu
anyway ;)

>>  - It we had our own budget... it is well known that Canonical/the
>>UbuntuFoundation has a some millions $, and it's quite complicated to
>>explain to someone that giving 1000$ to the Foundation, which already
>>has 10M$, would help us significantly.
>>
>>
> A good point.
>
>>  - Not for profit organisation are well known in France, and people are
>>confident in that type of organisation.  I think people would trust more
>>a 1901 organisation than the Ubuntu Foundation.
>>
>>
> Not sure I agree, but will defer to your take on French sensibilities.

>>For all these reasons, I ask you if it would be possible for the french
>>team to have a trademark agreement that would allow it to create an
>>organisation named Ubuntu-fr (which is in France really cheap and easy to
>>do) and to use it for the points I described above.
>>
>>
>
> All in all, I still don't see a reason for this and I think you have
> latched onto a "solution" which isn't necessary and will introduce even
> more complexity.

I think it's all about (de)centralisation... What independence should be
given to locoteams? that should be discussed at a cc-meeting... I still
think locoteams should be able to do more on their own, but I understand
your fears concerning that, especially with the current problems with the
latvian team.

> However, I'm willing to talk about it more.   If we
> were to do this, there are a number of concerns that we need to work
> out. Please think about this from our side:  we are being asked to allow
> an organisation, run by people we don't really know, to be legally
> incorporated and operate under the Ubuntu name.

Might that be ok if the locoteam leader is elected as a Ubuntu member at a
CCmeeting? That way, he would also be member of the Ubuntu foundation...
and the foundation would have his word on the creation of an official
locoteam entity.

>   We have already had
> issues with some LoCo teams where there has been contention over
> leadership and contention between related country/regional teams.
> There was a lot of discussion about whether LoCo teams should have
> "leaders" or "contacts" - that will be amplified if there is a legal
> structure with codified leadership positions.

There already is that leadership problem, I think you make allusion to the
italian team ;) In France we just asked on the loco mailing list if
everybody was ok with our being locoteamleaders, everybody seemed rather
pleased with that..

>  There is also a risk in
> some countries of the LoCo team being co-opted by a single strong-willed
> individual or organisation.  The potential for confusion, the potential
> for conflict between organisations and between people in an
> organisation, the potential for damage to the Ubuntu brand are all large
> and much more difficult to resolve when money and taxes and legal
> liabilities are involved.

We are already in charge for the ubuntufr website... as far as I know, it
was decided to let Canonical/the foundation handle the dns, and let the
locoteam handle the locoteam - so if one day the foundation is not happy
anymore with people running the website it still can block the dns. Maybe
you could do the same with trademark agreement, and keep the right to
revoke the trademark agreement once you're not happy with us anymore?

> And we shouldn't think it is just France - if
> we allow it in your case, we need to be prepared for the general case as
> it will quickly spread to other countries as well as regions and cities
> (which are also forming LoCo teams), there will be a confusion between
> LoCo teams and local non-profits, etc.  and I really don't want to
> create a whole new set of teams/organisations.

I think non-profits should be bound to locoteams, and run by the locoteam
leaders... it's just an officialisation of a team that already exists, in
fact. This should be the work of the locoteam itself, not that of
canonical.

> Can we talk about what sort of agreement would be necessary *if* we were
> to allow this.  I'm thinking of something that still starts with LoCo
> teams but then if a LoCo team needs to set up a legal structure in their
> own region, we could allow that if a set of conditions were met.    I'm
> still not sure this is necessary or even a good idea, but it will help
> to understand the issues if we try to make the discussion a little more
> concrete.

Agree, there must be conditions that'd have to be met..

>  Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of conditions like
> - must be an active LoCo team in good standing. "Active" could be
> measured by number of members, number of months in existence, something
> else?

These quotas are stronly in relation with the size of the country... maybe
there may be a vote at the cc meeting for teams asking to get an official
status?


> - needs to be a significant demand for the organisation - i.e., I don't
> want them to be created simply because (a) they can and (b) there is a
> single vocal individual.  Maybe a vote by the LoCo team members?

Actually there is no such official status of "locoteam member".  That's
why i don't think a vote would be a good idea.
Maybe there should be a discussion on the locoteam mailing list, and then
a vote at the cc meeting...

> - must be a non-profit.  Local laws and terminology will vary, but I
> think we understand what this means. It should be spelled out more
> completely though
Agree.

> - we should have a standard charter that these bodies adopt that
> outlines what the goals of the organisation are and how they will
> operate. In general I would like it tightly tied to the LoCo team.
> I.e., the association/non-profit is solely a mechanism of convenience to
> hold a bank account for the LoCo team.  Duplication and fighting and
> different governance structures between LoCo teams and local
> associations/non-profits will be a nightmare.
Agree, I think the non-profit should be run by the locoteam itself.

> - In some countries, the establishment of the new organisation requires
> a minimum governance structure.  It would be nice to have a standard
> governance structure that this organisations would adopt but this may be
> difficult as local laws may require different governance structures. In
> any case, I think leadership positions should be voluntary and subject
> to some sort of oversight - either votes by LoCo members or appointment
> by the Community Council or something.  There are a number of reasons
> for this - it is a fact of the open source world that people move on and
> don't have time for activities that were once important to them. I don't
> want an organisation handicapped by having an official who is no longer
> actively involved but a permanent part of the governance structure.
> There is also the case where the majority of the LoCo team disagrees
> with the whatever the leaders of the organisation are doing - if there
> is no oversight or if there is no reporting structure then there is
> nothing that can be done about it.
>
> - the charter/license is revokable at any time by decision by the
> Community Council.
Agree

> - who will pay the fees associated with company formation? In some
> countries non-profits have an annual legal filing requirement - will the
> LoCo team handle those?
If the locoteam/non profit hasa budget, then it should be able to finance
itself; in France it's really cheap, it just takes 30€ to create a non
profit.


I agree the Foundation _must_ keep control over the locoteams, and have
the right to revoke any trademark agreement at any time, in the same way
it actually handle the dns.
But I still think it would be better to let locoteams get their own
non-profit status in their country - i also would love to have the
opinions of the other locoteams :) I think we should continue to discuss
this topic here, and maybe officialize that at a ccmeeting once we come to
an agreement  :)

Yann - Ubuntufr