Re: New Canadian nonprofit for trademark, postgresql.org domain, etc.

2011/5/6 Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>:
> Hackers, Community members:
>
> As some of you already know, several important community assets are held
> in the personal name of Marc Fournier for historical reasons.  These
> assets include several DNS domains (including postgresql.org), our SSL
> key, and a Canadian trademark, and possibly a server as well in the future.
>
> For years, we have had the issue that if anything happened to Marc,
> getting control of these assets could be difficult and cause us weeks of
> wasted time, and perhaps even result in www.postgresql.org being offline
> for days or weeks.  Even to date, we've had issues where problems have
> happened while Marc was away and been unable to resolve them quickly.
>
> We have, however, come up with a potential plan to change this.  Marc
> has agreed to transfer the community assets to a new Canadian nonprofit
> which we set up for the purpose.  The PostgreSQL Core Team supports this
> solution, and as such I've been talking to Canadian attorneys about
> setting up the NPO (we need an entity in Canada because of the
> trademark).  The Funds Group has approved spending SPI money to pay for
> legal and operational fees for the corporation.
>
> Of course, a Canadian nonprofit could also act as a regional
> fundraiser/funder for events in Canada if anyone gets motivated to carry
> this out.
>
> For simplicity, the new NPO would initially be run by a small appointed
> board, initially consisting of Marc Fournier, Dave Page, Chris Browne
> and myself.  We'd have a first board meeting after incorporation and
> select additional/alternate board members at that time.
>
> If someone gets motivated to build up Canadian community activity, the
> membership of the NPO could be expanded in the future, and new board
> members could be elected.  Otherwise, the nonprofit could run under a
> stewardship board indefinitely.

I think it might be better if the association don't need (or have )
activity other than 'technical' and to set up another nonprofit
association for real activity.

>
> At this point, I am talking to attorneys about incorporation and bylaws.
>  So now is a very good time for anyone in the community to voice
> questions, objections, ideas, concerns, or alternatives, now would be a
> good time to present them.

no.
it is a good idea and great you handle that.
Thank you.

>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
> http://pgexperts.com
>
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Cédric Villemain               2ndQuadrant
http://2ndQuadrant.fr/     PostgreSQL : Expertise, Formation et Support