[okfn-discuss] Setting up 2 Funds (for F/OSS and Open Knowledge)

Fri Jul 14 18:53:10 UTC 2006

The idea is to set up two funds:

== Fund 1: Generic F/OSS Fund ==

Summary: Donates money to F/OSS projects that produce software we use.

Amount: 500 EUR / year

Motivation: Here at the OKF we use lots of F/OSS for the work we do. 
However while we do occasionally give back in the form of submitting 
bugs and contributing code as well as producing our own open source 
software it would be nice to explicitly recognize the contribution of 
F/OSS software by donating money to particular projects.

== Fund 2: Open Knowledge Projects Fund ==

Summary: supports external open knowledge projects.

The focus would be on projects actually producing open knowledge or
associated tools rather than campaigning organizations.

Amount: 5000 EUR / year

Motivation: while we are doing plenty of open knowledge work in house it 
is part of the OKF approach that open knowledge development will become 
more like software development in having a large diversity of projects 
and packages (with some mechanism for plugging different packages 
together). Supporting the development of external packages and tools 
would be a great way to encourage this approach, seed a wider OK 
community and raise the profile of the OKF.

== Administration ==

Funds would be administered by the OKF. Open discussion of their 
allocation would take place on the list. Decision making would be by 
consensus with fallback to a vote ASF style of the combined executive 
and advisory boards. In the long run we might want to appoint a specific 
committee that would deal with this.

Regarding application and disbursement I would prefer to have a model 
that involved **very low** transaction costs. There should be no complex 
application process (perhaps no application process at all -- or at most 
just a wiki page), decisions need not be justified etc.

== Provision of Funds ==

Funds would be provided by the OKF. Currently we have sufficient funds 
to cover at least this year and next in addition to our other commitments.

== Extensions ==

A tentative hope of mine is that these funds might over time develop 
into 'general' funds to which many people contribute. This would of 
course necessitate a concomitant widening of the governance (this would 
be an interesting issue to discuss further ...)

I've long meant to make contributions on a personal basis to various 
F/OSS projects whose software I've used. However whenever I've thought 
of doing this I've ended up debating issues such as how much to give and 
whom to give it too rather than actually giving the money. I would much 
prefer to be able to set up a standing order to donate annually to some 
fund and which would then take care of the administration and disbursement.

Similarly if I am an organization -- be it or a government, corporation, 
NGO etc -- it would be useful to have a central organization through 
which to disburse funds to F/OSS and OK projects and which would provide 
'features' such as:
   * Accountability and auditing (the money isn't being siphoned off ...)
   * Allocation decisions
   * Credibility with the community
   * Certification of the support (i.e. that the money has been given)