Re: Release Candidate of the PostgreSQL Europe association statutes

Ciao Joshua,
> Many professional trade organizations require membership fees. I for
> the most part don't have a problem with it. Although I was surprised
> that I was asked for money to join PostgreSQLFR.
Self-funding is a pretty common practice in Italy as well for non-profit
organisations. Keep in mind that the membership fee is usually a
symbolic donation. It is in the spirit of volunteer members that want to
put some of their money in an official association.

That's the case, for instance, of the Italian PostgreSQL Users Group as
well. We have just one typology of members, standard members, and the
annual fee is 25 euro. Running a non-profit organisation has some costs,
and members accept it.

I repeat, that's pretty normal in Italy, and I assume in France as well.
I cannot speak for other European countries though.

Of course, one of the organisation's objectives, as you mentioned, is to
raise money through events, partnerships, sponsorships, campaigns, etc.
and to reinvest in free software somehow (through promotion or even
project startups). This is one of the key goals of ITPUG, but I doubt it
will be reached before the end of the year (we will try hard - but it
all plays around IT PGDay 2008 organisation).

Ciao,
Gabriele

--
Gabriele Bartolini: Open source programmer and data architect
Current Location: Prato, Tuscany, Italy
gabriele(dot)bartolini(at)gmail(dot)com | www.gabrielebartolini.it
"If I had been born ugly, you would never have heard of Pelé", George Best
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gbartolini