llvm dev - Sep 2012 - [LLVMdev] Offer of membership to LLVM into the Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.

"Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn at sfconservancy.org> writes:
> I'm sorry for the intrusion of a project policy discussion onto the
> developer list, but there may be many here who may have thoughts, input,
> or question regarding Conservancy's offer for LLVM's membership,
> discussed below.  If you're not interested in that topic, please feel
> free to ignore this message.
I am interested but I must have missed some messages.  Chris and Tanya,
can you explain what the goal is here?  Is LLVM lookinmg for funding,
copyright enforcement or something else?

Thanks!

                                  -Dave

On Sep 19, 2012, at 10:14 AM, dag at cray.com wrote:
> "Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn at sfconservancy.org> writes:
>> I'm sorry for the intrusion of a project policy discussion onto the
>> developer list, but there may be many here who may have thoughts,
input,
>> or question regarding Conservancy's offer for LLVM's
membership,
>> discussed below.  If you're not interested in that topic, please
feel
>> free to ignore this message.
> 
> I am interested but I must have missed some messages.  Chris and Tanya,
> can you explain what the goal is here?  Is LLVM lookinmg for funding,
> copyright enforcement or something else?
I responded on the other email more generally, but to answer these specific
questions:

Yes, we would like to make it easier for companies and individuals to donate
money, but also we need a way to be able to spend it.  The University of
Illinois is our current solution - they are capable of accepting money and keep
it in an ear-marked account, but our requests to actually spend it (e.g. for
student travel) are outstripping their time resources, particularly because the
University folks that end up having to do this aren't used to dealing with
open source projects.

We are not interested in copyright enforcement at all.  In personal discussions
with Bradley, he mentioned that they may be able to help us move the codebase to
the MIT license, which would clarify that issue as well as resolve the current
issues around runtime libraries.

-Chris

I'd like to follow up on Chris' message with a few details about how
Conservancy works.  Specifically, Conservancy has generally always offered
our services "a la carte", in the sense that while we have a very
extensive service plan ( http://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ ), I
don't think there's a single one of our projects that takes advantage of
all the services we offer; they pick and chose.

One of the reasons for this is that we have a wide diversity of projects (
http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/ ), from copylefted projects like
BusyBox to permissively licensed ones like Boost.  We've got
end-user applications like Evergreen and Mifos, and also programming
language infrastructure projects like PyPy.

With that level of diversity, usually each project needs very different
things.  We tailor our work with them to fit what the project's community
needs.  We'd do the same for LLVM if you decide to accept the offer of
membership.

Meanwhile, I'm really glad that LLVM is looking at all its options for
non-profit existence.  Each solution to this problem has its own tweaks
and trade-offs, and it ultimately is a question of good cultural fit. Thus,
I'd like to begin a conversation so the LLVM community as a whole can find
out all it wants to know about Conservancy as an option, so you can easily
compare it to your other options.  As a 501(c)(3) charity, Conservancy's
first and foremost charge is to serve the public good, and that public
includes both users of the software under our auspices and the individual
developers who contribute to it.  We thus want to hear all we can from any
stakeholder about what they want regarding a potential non-profit existence
for LLVM before finalizing anything.

Finally, Conservancy's mission isn't just to get projects to join: our
mission
includs helping Free Software projects find the *right* non-profit home
for the project.  It's not uncommon that projects are offered membership
in Conservancy and go with another fiscal sponsor in the end.  We think
that's a great outcome, because we want to help projects make the right
choice.

I hope those interested in learning more will read the Fiscal Sponsorship
Agreement template and ask any questions you have.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy

Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> writes:
> Yes, we would like to make it easier for companies and individuals to
> donate money, but also we need a way to be able to spend it.  The
> University of Illinois is our current solution - they are capable of
> accepting money and keep it in an ear-marked account, but our requests
> to actually spend it (e.g. for student travel) are outstripping their
> time resources, particularly because the University folks that end up
> having to do this aren't used to dealing with open source projects.
Ah, makes perfect sense.
> We are not interested in copyright enforcement at all.  In personal
> discussions with Bradley, he mentioned that they may be able to help
> us move the codebase to the MIT license, which would clarify that
> issue as well as resolve the current issues around runtime libraries.
Thanks for clarifying, this is helpful.  What's the motivation for
moving to the MIT license?  Something more than general familiarity?

What's the issue with runtime libraries?

Thanks!

                           -David