Comment by kdumont
3 years ago
As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'm a contributor to gitea and have no ownership in the new organization. I genuinely would like some clarification to the points in the letter, as I'm trying to advise the owners and understand my future with the project.
It seems like the demands are:
> Implementing an intuitive and fair election process.
I think we do that now: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... Anyone who has contributed to the gitea project more than 2x PRs is invited to be a maintainer. Every maintainer gets 3 votes. Maybe there are some suggestions for improving - please open a PR.
> Describing the ways in which democratic decisions are to be made.
Again, I'm just confused what's being requested. Moving on.
> Providing accessible places where all relevant information can be found.
This seems like the same request as above. Or maybe a request for better documentation. I agree. Open a PR, don't fork gitea.
> Establishing a DoOcracy that works and continue to improve it.
I agree with this and I suspect that was the intention with the original reference to DAOs, but needs to be clarified.
> A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created. > The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit. > The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit.
Does anyone have experience with how this is typically handled? It seems like this is the only actionable request. What are some examples of non-profit open-source companies? Is that typical?
There only are three demands:
> A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created.
> The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit.
> The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit.
A week ago the Gitea project was an informal community trusting elected individuals with essential assets such as the domains and the trademark. They had a clear moral bound (see https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#...) to pass on the ownership of the project to their successor.
But they thought it was ok to create a company and take the domains and trademark as if they were their property. Maybe the absence of a legal bound made them forget their promise, their moral obligation towards the Gitea community.
Creating a non-profit will avoid that kind of problem in the future and give back the domains and the trademark to the Gitea community. If the president of a non-profit was to transfer the domain name to a for-profit company they exclusively control, the members of the non profit will be in a position to sue the president for embezzlement.
If the for profit company refuses to give back the domains and trademark, that would be very damaging to the project. The post from Harald Welte on that topic in the Gitea forum is enlightening in that regard, see https://discourse.gitea.io/t/open-source-sustainment-and-the...
The other points you cite from the Open Letter are merely suggestions for future improvements (as stated in the letter), not demands.
Shades of Freenode.
> What are some examples of non-profit open-source companies? Is that typical?
The Apache foundation? FSF? The Mozilla foundation (which is different but related to the for-profit Mozilla Corporation)? The rust foundation? CNCF? Probably many others.
It would also probably be possible to find a suitable existing non-profit that could act as a steward of these resources.