Hi Everyone,
here is the sample constitution that I mentioned in my previous mail. It's long-ish, so here's the gist of it:
* Objective: promotion of Free Software * A general committee of 6+ people meeting not less than once a year * An executive committee of 3+ people meeting not less than bi-monthly (for "ordinary business") * Positions: Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer (all on both committees) * Membership: open to all, with annual fees.
I hope I haven't left any serious gotchas in the rules - they are adapted from various templates.
The one term that is not defined here is 'Free Software' - I would advocate including either (i) The GNU Free Software Definition (my personal preference) (ii) the DFSG (or the OSI's OSD - same thing) as an appendix to clarify things. I have written Object 2 assuming we will do that. I have purposely not selected a solution in this document since I don't want to distract from the purely procedural things that are also contained in it. Eventually this would be something the committee would do when adapting the rules.
======= Proposed Constitution for IFSO =======
OBJECTS
1. The name of the Club shall be Irish Free Software Organisation ('IFSO')
2. IFSO will promote the writing and use of Free Software as defined by the guidelines below. IFSO will be active in affiliation and liaison with other similar groups and promote Free Software in the media, online and in daily activities
CONSTITUTION
1. MEMBERSHIP
1.1. IFSO will grant membership to anyone who asks for it.
1.2. Membership of IFSO shall comprise Ordinary, Student, and Honorary members. The Membership of Honorary Members may be limited in time.
1.3. All new members shall be invited to complete an application form for membership for consideration and approval by the Membership Committee.
2. ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
2.1. At the start of each year the Chairman shall convene an Annual General Meeting.
2.2. At least four weeks notice of the Annual General Meeting shall be given to each member of IFSO by such means as the Secretary shall deem appropriate. The notice shall specify the time and place of the Meeting and be accompanied by an agenda of the business to be transacted at it.
2.3. The agenda shall include, inter alia,
2.3.1. nominations for the offices to be filled for the ensuing year and shall include the following: The Chairman, the Secretary and the Treasurer all of whom shall be members of IFSO and shall hold office for one year but shall be eligible for re-election.
2.3.2. Nominations for these offices and any other offices shall be made to the Secretary in writing not later than two weeks before the Annual General Meeting.
2.3.3. The appointment of a General Committee which shall consist of the Officers under 2.3.1 above and at least three members whom the General Meeting elect.
2.3.4. A proposal to receive and approve the Annual Accounts copies of which shall be made available to the General Meeting which may be adjourned to receive and approve the audited accounts.
2.4 The amounts of the annual subscriptions and the dates upon which they become due shall be decided at the Annual General Meeting.
2.5. All paid up members of IFSO shall be entitled to attend and vote at the Annual General Meeting.
2.6. Election of officers shall be by a show of hands and in the event of any dispute the Chairman may call for an election by paper ballot or adjourn the meeting for that issue to be determined separately.
2.7. A quorum for a General Meeting held under these Rules shall be five paid up members of IFSO.
3. EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING
3.1. An Extraordinary General Meeting shall be convened by The Chairman upon receipt by him of a written request so to do signed by not less than six paid up members of IFSO such request to make specific the purpose of the request and any resolutions proposed.
3.2. The Chairman of IFSO shall within a reasonable period of time following receipt of such request convene an Extraordinary General Meeting by giving a notice to all paid up members as prescribed in clause 2.2. above.
4. COMMITTEES
4.1. General Committee
4.1.1. The General Committee shall have power to appoint a member to fill any office falling vacant after the Annual General Meeting.
4.1.2. A Meeting of the General Committee may be convened upon not less than one weeks notice being given to each member thereof.
4.1.3. The General Committee may co-opt additional members to any Committee or sub-Committee and may appoint one or more sub-Committees and for such purposes as it may deem appropriate.
4.1.4. A quorum for a General Committee Meeting held under these Rules shall be five members.
The Executive Committee
4.2.6. The Executive Committee shall consist of The Chairman, the Secretary, the Treasurer and any additional members appointed from IFSO Membership by the General Committee. A quorum for an Executive Committee Meeting shall be three members.
4.2.7. The Executive Committee shall have the conduct of the ordinary management of IFSO and shall meet as often as it may decide but not less than every eight weeks. The ordinary management of IFSO shall include the suspension of any Member of IFSO who has not paid his subscription.
4.2.8. The Executive Committee may refer any matter and shall refer any extraordinary or contentious matter to the General Committee.
7. ALTERATIONS
7.1 None of these rules shall be altered or rescinded unless the proposed alteration or rescission shall first have been submitted to the General Committee and subsequently shall be approved by not less than two thirds of those present at the Annual General Meeting or at an Extraordinary General Meeting.
7.2. Any dispute concerning the construction or interpretation of these Rules shall be decided by the General Committee whose decision shall be final.
Hi Glen, Sorry for the delay in replying
The one term that is not defined here is 'Free Software' - I would advocate including either (i) The GNU Free Software Definition (my personal preference) (ii) the DFSG (or the OSI's OSD - same thing) as an appendix to clarify things.
Good idea :P
I've only 2 suggestions and 2 question a) That the name of the club be IFSO or the Irish translation (whichever one we agree on) b) An objective should be to encourage Irish language translations of Free Software. c) instead of "promote Free Software in the media, online and in daily activities" should we actually state promote FS in business, education and media? d) What's the time scale for this?
======= Proposed Constitution for IFSO =======
OBJECTS
- The name of the Club shall be Irish Free Software Organisation
('IFSO')
- IFSO will promote the writing and use of Free Software as defined by the guidelines below. IFSO will be active in affiliation and liaison with other similar groups and promote Free Software in the media, online and in daily activities
-- Thank you, Aidan Delaney.
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
No doubt this is doing the rounds today. Read the full thing in it's original format for best effect. :)
adam
Syllabus Magazine Wed., Nov. 5, 2003
The FREE, 0% APR, Better Sex, No Effort Diet
Howard Strauss
http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=8460
I AM MRS. HAJIAH HASSAN AHMED, THE WIFE OF LATE CHIEF ALHAJI HASSAN AHMED...I SEEK IN CONFIDENCE THAT YOU ASSIST ME TO INVEST THIS US$34,000,000 FUND. I HAVE RESOLVED TO DEPART 25% OF THE TOTAL SUM TO YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN THIS TRANSACTION SECURED BY YOUR GOOD FAITH DEPOSIT OF US$5,000.
Few of us would rush to send Mrs. Ahmed the $5,000 she asks for in return for a promised $8.5 million. This is clearly the mythical free lunch; a scam; a pitch that promises something for nothing; a special deal only for us. We are all much too sophisticated to believe that millions of dollars will fall into our laps with no effort on our partor are we? Many of us buy the following scams where perhaps the lack of all caps serves to disguise them.
Free Software
Why buy expensive software or spend millions to develop it yourself? You can get complex systems at absolutely NO COST! Yes, instead of having highly paid programmers at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, or even Blackboard build your critical university systems, you can have scores of software gurus scattered around the globe working completely independently build them for you FOR FREE. These folks are some of the same great people who are supposed to be working for you anyway, plus a smattering of teenagers too young to work at Redmond, hackers, virus creators, and a menagerie of others with whom you will feel great pride in entrusting your IT infrastructure.
This is the alluring pitch of open source software. We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but its FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway.
[...]
On 5 Nov 2003 at 15:06, adam beecher wrote:
This is the alluring pitch of open source software. We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but its FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway.
Trolling aside, he has a point in some areas. Free software has better quality, better support for programmers and it comes with source which is always a good thing, plus you get the right to fork off improved versions.
However, I can't say too much for planning, accountability and support for end-users - plus free software projects usually deliver what's a good idea, not actually what the user wants (I personally think this is mostly a good thing as it encourages dumb users to improve themselves. But most people resist harder the more you encourage them eg; today I tried convincing someone to stop using Outlook Express and it backfired :(. Also, it genuinely is a bad thing especially when GPL believers refuse point blank to design their software to work on Windows :( )
It's very easy to get caught into thinking that free software is the panacea to cure all ills and it /is/ for *programmer's* ills. But for joe soap, he only cares because it's free - and that's dangerous, as like downloading music it means no work for programmers with time as work shifts entirely to the third world.
Cheers, Niall
However, I can't say too much for planning, accountability and support for end-users - plus free software projects usually deliver
It depends on the project too though, don't you think? I was mulling the particular paragraph you quoted myself when I was reading it and thinking of the PHP project...
project planning
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev
An enormous amount of planning goes on on php-dev, plus there are major PHP conferences now.
quality control
Again, these guys do an absolutely enormous amount of work.
coding standards
http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php
Obviously this particular link isn't entirely appropriate, but PEAR is bundled with PHP and the PHP developers themselves do adhere to strict coding standards.
accountability
This is a difficult one to call. I personally feel that PHP's vast install base creates accountability and major responsibility, but I guess many Chief Something Officers won't see it the same way.
version control
This one strikes me as a little odd when you consider just how many projects are stored in CVS. Perhaps CVS isn't considered good enough?
support
And this one is like accountability, I could link to hundreds of sites here. I personally would take community support over "proper" support any day of the week, but I would concede that there's a certain amount of skill involved in seeking it out.
All that being said, obviously big projects like web servers and mail servers and name servers and the like are going to adhere to these kind of "standards" quite closely, but many thousands of projects won't -- just look at Freshmeat and Sourceforge. But aren't the big projects the important ones?
adam
project planning
Same with GCC, Python etc...
quality control
Umm Debian
Again, these guys do an absolutely enormous amount of work.
coding standards
There are Free Software coding standards for every language (except Perl maybe:) and there are usually Emacs modes to support developers to use them.
accountability
This is a difficult one to call. I personally feel that PHP's vast install base creates accountability and major responsibility, but I guess many Chief Something Officers won't see it the same way.
Who is accountable for propritery software? No-one if you have big enough pockets. Anyhow, this probably dosn't apply in the EU where Free Software developers ARE accountable for their software.
version control
This one strikes me as a little odd when you consider just how many projects are stored in CVS. Perhaps CVS isn't considered good enough?
GNU Arch is the _best_ version control system I have ever used bar none, and I've used several propritery systems in my time (SourceSafe, Clearcase)
support
And this one is like accountability, I could link to hundreds of sites here. I personally would take community support over "proper" support any day of the week, but I would concede that there's a certain amount of skill involved in seeking it out.
I like community support, but you can get support for GNU/Linux or OpenOffice. Buy a support licence from IBM, Sun, SuSe, RedHat, Mandrake or a local support company.
-- Thank you, Aidan Delaney.
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
On 6 Nov 2003 at 1:37, adam beecher wrote:
However, I can't say too much for planning, accountability and support for end-users - plus free software projects usually deliver
It depends on the project too though, don't you think? I was mulling the particular paragraph you quoted myself when I was reading it and thinking of the PHP project...
Well, in terms of what I said, actually no it doesn't. The only exception I can think of are DARPA funded free software for the planning bit.
project planning
An enormous amount of planning goes on on php-dev, plus there are major PHP conferences now.
Ah but that's ad hoc planning ie; what are the *immediate* issues we should tackle. Very rarely do I hear of free software being studiously planned years into the future like is more common for proprietary.
accountability
This is a difficult one to call. I personally feel that PHP's vast install base creates accountability and major responsibility, but I guess many Chief Something Officers won't see it the same way.
No, they don't. They want someone to sue to satisfy their insurers/shareholders. That is the single biggest reason corporate users have not moved en mass to free software.
version control
This one strikes me as a little odd when you consider just how many projects are stored in CVS. Perhaps CVS isn't considered good enough?
I think they meant that when there are fixed versions with fixed ABI's, it's easier to code for them. Release often release early is good and all, but it's real bitch for downloading prebuilt binaries.
support
And this one is like accountability, I could link to hundreds of sites here. I personally would take community support over "proper" support any day of the week, but I would concede that there's a certain amount of skill involved in seeking it out.
Support for users is VERY lacking. You get none even for Linux for people who don't know the difference between the three mouse buttons. Remember, support is not helping technically aware users, it's helping the unaware.
And that, no coincidentally, is where free software makes most of its money ATM. My big concern with that is it's not long-term viable as someone in India can tell you why the left and right mouse buttons are different cheaper than someone in Ireland.
Cheers, Niall
On Wednesday, November 5, 2003 at 05:37 +0000, Aidan Delaney wrote:
Sorry for the delay in replying
Hi Aidan, thanks for your reply.
I've only 2 suggestions and 2 question a) That the name of the club be IFSO or the Irish translation (whichever one we agree on)
Yes - I was aware of the issue of an appropriate Irish name for the group, but I didn't include it since the discussion was ongoing. At this time I would suggest using IFSO and having an "official translation" of the name. If necessary we can register more than one name for the organisation (via an RBN form).
b) An objective should be to encourage Irish language translations of Free Software.
This sounds reasonable to me, for an explicitly Irish group. The exact goals are probably the most important and difficult part of the constitution and I'll be taking another cut at them tomorrow (may not get posted until Friday). There are a few problems with the rules that I need to clean up anyway.
c) instead of "promote Free Software in the media, online and in daily activities" should we actually state promote FS in business, education and media?
I think I like your version better than mine.
d) What's the time scale for this?
It depends on whether we can agree a final constitution in time, but ideally we would do this at the next IFSO get-together (November 13th). That will hopefully allow us to launch ifso.ie in January. If you think the constitution needs major surgery before being accepted shout now (well wait until Friday for a revised draft - give me a chance!)
Glenn Strong Glenn.Strong@cs.tcd.ie writes:
On Wednesday, November 5, 2003 at 05:37 +0000, Aidan Delaney wrote:
c) instead of "promote Free Software in the media, online and in daily activities" should we actually state promote FS in business, education and media?
or even just "to promote and defend Free Software"? (no need to limit it to specific groups, especially excluding the general public)
d) What's the time scale for this?
It depends on whether we can agree a final constitution in time, but ideally we would do this at the next IFSO get-together (November 13th).
There are a few other issues with the charter, and it would be easiest to discuss them in person.
How about we discuss IFSO on Nov 13th, and create it at the next meeting: Dec 11th? (and found/announce on Jan 5th)
I suggest we send a copy to AFFS and FSFE before we all agree to it, lest we repeat mistakes they wish they didn't make etc.