[foundation-board] Big review of OKF finances, contracts, HR, etc?

Wed May 25 07:12:33 UTC 2011

Ah!

This looks like a big board meeting agenda item.

Talked about this sort of thing with Becky when we met up with Ben Laurie
late last year. About the prospect of separating out the Foundation
(projects community, WGs) from its commercial activities, into differently
managed entities.

Since then I certainly havent followed it up; coincidentally enough was
chatting to Will during a cab ride yesterday and he was mentioning this same
idea.

Stuff that this implies we ought to consider:

* roadmap for open governance of the Foundation-community part (meritocratic
membership a-la ASF)

* which part keeps the OKF name (e.g. does the commercial arm become "OKF
Labs" or something

* how this would affect our tax situation, some reasonable-detail financial
projections of the outcome

Thoughts apprec

On 24 May 2011 13:27, "Jonathan Gray" <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:

I agree that we should try to make more stuff public - but not so
optimistic about how soon this will happen after speaking to Jason and
others about this.

One thing that we've been speaking about more and more is the (re-)
division of the OKF into:

 * The Open Knowledge Foundation - which takes on contracts, paid
work, consultancy, pays people and is legally responsible for
delivering on projects. The board is responsible for this bit. This is
the bit that Jason is responsible for making sustainable. And where
all the business development happens (e.g. doing CKAN customisation
work, etc). And it dedicates resources/time/etc to ...
 * The Open Knowledge Foundation Network - which is much more
autonomous. The working groups, and all the smaller projects are part
of this. This is basically 100% community driven. The executive group
and WG leads work on this. The Foundation gives it an annual budget to
spend on projects, events, and other activities as the community see
fit.

I am (obviously) most keen to work on the second part. I don't do any
of the money stuff, nor am I keen to. I'd much prefer that there were
dedicated people making sure these aspects of the OKF operate
smoothly.

What do people think?

All the best,

Jonathan

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Jo Walsh <metazool at gmail.com> wrote:
> Predictably enough, I thin...

> foundation-board at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
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>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

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