FlightGear Forum
My question is: could FlightGear become a part of this and could this help?
Looking at their about page, at the very least this sort of thing could help prevent "Pro Flight Sim" stuff:
Software Freedom Conservancy Services wrote:Member Project Services
Conservancy assists FLOSS project leaders by handling all matters other than software development and documentation, so the developers can focus on what they do best: improving the software for the public good. The following are the services and options that are available to FLOSS projects that have joined Conservancy as a member project.
Tax-Deductible, Earmarked Donations
Member projects can receive earmarked donations through Conservancy. Since Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) charity incorporated in New York, donors can often deduct the donation on their USA taxes. Additionally, the donors can indicate that their donation should be used to advance a specific member project, and those funds are kept in a separate account for the member project by Conservancy. This structure prevents developers from having to commingle project funds with their own personal accounts or having to set up their own project specific account.
Since Conservancy is a tax-exempt organization, there are some limits that the law places on what member projects can do with their assets, but those limits are the same as if the project was an independent non-profit entity. Usually, the project leadership instructs Conservancy's leadership on how the project's funds are spent. Conservancy spends these funds on the project's behalf on any expenses that constitute appropriate activity under Conservancy's 501(c)(3) not-for-profit mission. Some typical uses of earmarked donations by Conservancy's member projects are:
•funding travel expenses for project developers to attend relevant conferences.
•domain name fees, bandwidth costs, and computer equipment purchases.
•purchasing media for distribution of project software at conferences and events.
•paying key developers on a contractual basis to improve the project's software and its documentation.
•sponsoring and organizing conferences for the project.
•trademark registration and enforcement.
•FLOSS license enforcement and compliance activity.
Asset Stewardship
Conservancy can hold any assets for the project on its behalf. This includes copyrights, trademarks, domain names, physical computer equipment or anything that should be officially held in the name of the project. Member projects are not required that Conservancy hold all assets of a project. (For example, member projects are not required to assign copyrights to Conservancy.) However, Conservancy can accommodate the needs of projects that want their assets under the control of a not-for-profit entity and exercised only for the public good.
Contract Negotiation and Execution
Projects sometimes need to negotiate and execute a contract with a company. For example, when a project wants to organize and run a conference, the venue usually has a complicated contract for rental of the space and services. Conservancy assists projects in the negotiation of such contracts, and can sign them on behalf of the project.
Conference Logistical Support
Many Conservancy projects have an annual conference. Conservancy provides logistical support for these conferences, particularly in the area of financial responsibility and liability. Conservancy provides a small amount of logistical support for conference in other ways, resource-permitting.
Basic Legal Advice and Services
Since projects, upon joining, become organizationally part of Conservancy, Conservancy can provide basic legal services to its member projects through Conservancy's own General Counsel, outside counsel, and pro-bono attorneys. For example, Conservancy assists its projects in handling issues related to trademark registration, trademark policy development and licensing, trademark enforcement, copyright licensing and enforcement, and non-profit governance questions and issues.
FLOSS Copyright License Enforcement
Complying with FLOSS licenses is easy, as they permit and encourage both non-commercial and commercial distribution and improvements. Nevertheless, violations of FLOSS licenses (in particular of the GPL and LGPL) are all too common. At request of the project's leaders, Conservancy can carry out license enforcement activity on behalf of the project's copyright holders.
Fundraising Assistance
Conservancy provides various tools and advice to member projects on methods of raising funds for their projects' earmarked accounts.
Avoid Non-Profit Administrivia
Member projects can continue to operate in the same way they did before joining Conservancy without having to select a board of directors or any other layer of corporate management, without having to maintain corporate records and without having to do any of the other things required of incorporated entities. Conservancy handles all of that burden on behalf of its projects.
Leadership Mentoring, Advice and Guidance
Many of Conservancy's directors are experienced FLOSS project leaders. They offer themselves as a resource to member project leaders who need assistance or face challenges in their work leading their projects.
Some Personal Liability Protection
When a project joins Conservancy, it formally becomes part of the Conservancy. (The project is thus somewhat analogous to a division of a company or a department in a large agency.) As such, project leaders benefit from some amount of protection from personal liability for their work on the project.
Officiating Community Elections and Ballot Initiatives
Conservancy will organize and run community leadership committee elections and/or ballot initiatives for its member project communities, using online voting software.
Those familiar with non-profit terminology will recognize most of these services as fiscal sponsorship services. This term is not particularly well known in the FLOSS community, and many are confused by that term. However, if you are familiar with what a fiscal sponsor typically does in the non-profit sector, the term does fit many of services that Conservancy offers its member projects.
Project leaders that believe their project might benefit from these services can apply to become a member project.
And about applying:
Applying to Join Conservancy as a Member Project
Conservancy's Evaluation Committee considers applications monthly on a rolling basis. Currently, Conservancy has dozens of projects in various stages of the application process.
The application process is somewhat informal. New applicants should write an initial inquiry email to <apply@sfconservancy.org> with a very brief description of their project and a URL to their project's website. We'll send back initial questions (if any), and after those questions are answered, we'll send the full application materials. Applications should be submitted in plain ASCII text via email.
Projects are reviewed by Conservancy's Evaluation Committee, which is chartered by Conservancy's Board of Directors.
Project Membership Application FAQs
The following are various questions that we typically get from project leaders that wish to apply to Conservancy.
I sent in my inquiry letter and/or application a long time ago. Why haven't you replied?
Conservancy receives an overwhelming level of interest and we have very few staff positions to meet the interest and demand for Conservancy's services to its member projects. Meanwhile, Conservancy always prioritizes needs of its existing member projects over new inquiries and applications. Therefore, it sometimes can take quite a while to finish the application process and be offered membership, but please note that such delays mean that should your project ultimately become a member project, your project will then be a beneficiary of this policy.
What are the key criteria our project must meet to join?
In order to join, projects need to meet certain criteria. A rough outline of those criteria are as follows:
•The project must be a software development or documentation project. Non-software projects to advance the cause of software freedom, while important and useful, are beyond the scope of Conservancy.
•The project must be exclusively devoted to the development and documentation of FLOSS. The project's goals must be consistent with Conservancy's tax-exempt purposes, and other requirements imposed on Conservancy by the IRS' 501(c)(3) rules. Namely, the goal of the project must to develop and document the software in a not-for-profit way to advance the public good, and must develop the software in public.
•The project must be licensed in a way fitting with software freedom principles. Specifically, all software of the project should be licensed under a license that is listed both as a Free Software license by the Free Software Foundation and as an Open Source license by the Open Source Initiative. All software documentation for the project should be licensed under a license on the preceding lists, or under Creative Commons' CC-By-SA or CC-By or CC-0.
•The project should have an existing, vibrant, diverse community that develops and documents the software. For example, projects that have been under development for less than a year or only a “proof of concept” implementation are generally not eligible.
While any project meeting the criteria above can apply, meeting these criteria doesn't guarantee acceptance of your project. Conservancy favors projects that are well-established and have some track record of substantial contributions from a community of volunteer developers. Furthermore, Conservancy does give higher priority to projects that have an established userbase and interest, but also tries to accept some smaller projects with strong potential.
Is our project required to accept membership if offered?
Not at all. Many projects apply and subsequently decide not to join a non-profit, or decide to join a different non-profit entity. Don't worry about “wasting our time” if your project's developers aren't completely sure yet if they want to join Conservancy. If membership in Conservancy is currently a legitimate consideration for your project, we encourage you to apply. We'd rather that you apply and turn down an offer for membership than fail to apply and have to wait until the next application round when you're sure.
What benefits does our project get from joining?
We maintain a detailed list of services that Conservancy provides to member projects. If you have detailed questions about any of the benefits, please ask <apply@sfconservancy.org>.
Conservancy seems to be called a “fiscal sponsor” to its member projects. Does that mean you give our project money if we join?
It's true that we would love to fund our member projects if it were possible, because we believe they deserve to be funded. However, that's not typically what a fiscal sponsor does. The term “fiscal sponsor“ is often used in non-profit settings and has a standard meaning there. But, to those not familiar with non-profit operations, it comes across as a bit of a misnomer.
In this context, a fiscal sponsor is a non-profit organization that, rather than fund a project directly, provides the required infrastructure and facilitates the project's ability to raise its own funds. Conservancy therefore assists your project in raising funds, and allows your project to hold those funds and spend them on activities that simultaneously advance Conservancy's non-profit mission and the FLOSS development and documentation goals of the project.
What will the project leaders have to agree to if our project joins?
Once you're offered membership, Conservancy will send you a draft fiscal sponsorship agreement (FSA). A template of Conservancy's FSA is available in PDF (and in ODT). Please note that the preceding documents are only templates. Please do not try to fill one out and send it to Conservancy. The final FSA between Conservancy and your project needs to be negotiated between us, and as can been seen in the template, the Representation section needs substantial work. If your project is offered membership, Conservancy will work with you adapt the FSA template to suit the needs and specific circumstances of your project. This is painstaking work, and it's better to complete that work after both Conservancy and the project are quite sure that they both want the project to join Conservancy.
If my project joins Conservancy, how will it change?
Substantively, member projects continue to operate in the same way as they did before joining Conservancy. So long as the project remains devoted to software freedom and operates consistently with the Conservancy's tax-exempt status, Conservancy does not intervene in the project's development other than to provide administrative assistance. For example, Conservancy keeps and maintains books and records for the project and assists with the logistics of receiving donations, but does not involve itself with technical or artistic decision making. Projects are asked, however, to keep Conservancy up to date on their activities.
Once our project joins, who holds its assets (money, copyrights, trademarks, etc.)?
Conservancy holds assets on behalf of its member projects and manages and disburses those assets in accordance with the wishes of the project's leadership. Funds received by Conservancy on behalf of a project are kept track of separately for each specific project and the management of those funds is directed by the project. For example, if a donor wanted to contribute $100 to Project Foo, they would formally make the donation to Conservancy and identify Project Foo as the desired project to support. Conservancy would then deposit the check and earmark the funds for use by Project Foo. Project Foo would then tell the Conservancy how that money should be spent. As long as that expense is a legitimate non-profit expense fitting with Conservancy's non-profit mission, Conservancy pays the expense on the Project's behalf.
Similarly, any copyrights, trademarks, domain name or other assets transferred to a project can also be held by Conservancy on behalf of the project. A significant service that Conservancy provides its members is a vehicle through which copyright ownership in the project can be unified. There are several advantages to having a consolidated copyright structure, including that it makes enforcement activity easier and more effective. However, copyright, trademark, and domain name assignment is not a requirement in order to join Conservancy, rather, it is an option for those projects that ask for it.
If our project joins, must it be a member project of Conservancy forever?
All agreements between member projects and Conservancy stipulate clearly that the member project can leave Conservancy with a few months' notice. Federal tax exemption law, though, states that projects must transfer their assets from Conservancy in a way that is consistent with Conservancy's not-for-profit tax status — meaning the assets cannot be transferred to an individual or a for-profit entity. Generally, a project would either find another fiscal sponsor or form their own independent tax-exempt non-profit.
We fully expect that some Conservancy projects will ultimately wish to form their own non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations; that's why we design our agreements with projects to allow them to leave to another 501(c)(3) organization. Typically, projects join Conservancy because the project leaders don't want the burdens of running a non-profit themselves. Often, as projects grow, leaders get interested in the non-profit management and organizational side of the activities and are then prepared to take on the additional work themselves.
How are “project leaders” defined with respect to Conservancy?
How leaders are chosen for projects varies greatly from project to project. Our goal is to do our best to embody the “natural” leadership structure that evolved in your project into the formal agreement with Conservancy. As part of the agreement drafting, we work carefully with you to understand your project's governance and write up formally with you the decision-making process you use. Most project contributors find this process of formalizing the leadership structure helps them clarify in their own minds the governance of their project, even though the process can be difficult. Since it can be a complicated process, we suggest that you prepare your project community for this discussion once your project is accepted.
How much does it cost us financially to join Conservancy?
New Conservancy members are required to pay 10% of their revenue that Conservancy processes to Conservancy's general fund, which primarily is used to pay staff. (Details on how Conservancy spends its funds, including salaries of key employees, can be found in Conservancy's annual filings.)
Historically, Conservancy allowed projects to give less or nothing at all to the general fund, but we unfortunately discovered that without this requirement, Conservancy was not able to offer the myriad of services to all its projects, particularly to larger projects that have more income and therefore need more attention from staff.
We do understand that, particularly for small projects that only receive a few small donations, that donating a percentage of your income back to Conservancy can be a high burden. Therefore, Conservancy remains open to discussion on a case-by-case basis for smaller projects about how to handle this requirement, and applicants should feel free to raise any concerns about this issue during the application process.
