[Typo3-dev] braindump: TYPO3 foundation

[dan frost]

> - "Giving more power to local foundation leaders"
> You know what happens if you give power to someone, don't you? Those
> people start dancing around like crazy chicken singing "mine mine mine".
> IMO Typo3 and Open Source in general shouldn't be about politics, and
> that's exactly what you gonna get.

Point taken, but this should be dealt with by careful deligation and 
management - which is completely up to and the responsibility of the 
founders of the foundation.

> - "Local foundations"
> Today, we have anarchy, everyone is able to found a Typo3-UG. If someone
> dislikes the people in charge of his local TUG - he can just start a new
> one. (Which is more or less equal, because these local groups have no
> official rights or votes or ....)
> With a foundation, there would be an official local institution (you
> don't want to have 3 Typo3-Yourcity foundations, do you?), so that would
> be a lot difficult, if you really dislike the way, things are handled by
> your local foundation. People would just not care about taking part in
> such a thing, and perhaps turn even away from Typo.

The Typo3 foundation should - i think - be a local thing at the start. 
It should be a "global" foundation which links all the local efforts 
together.

I think the foundation should be linked with local groups. But don't 
make them the same thing - leave room for local groups to have fun and 
do what they want to. (All my opinion).

> 
> - "Fund raising"
> On the other hand, yes it would speed up fund-raising. But if there is
> no totally transparent way of handling donations and the way they are
> used (online votes) - this could lead to a situation where a foundation
> leader always directs the money to his closest friends, for writing a
> "nothing"-extension.

Again, yes: it will have to be transparent. On the other hand we must 
trust those people who run the foundation. Perhaps if the foundation 
publishes income/outgoings/financial-interests etc. But we must be 
really careful not to create a monster of organisation madness!

> 
> - "Closed topics for companies on conferences"
> What's that supposed to be good for? Wouldn't that totally jeopardize
> the open-source idea - IMO this would be just a step away of
> dual-licensing, something I'm really frustrated about.
> 
> I think a good Typehead can do exactly what you want.
> I would rather live under a friendly dictator in anarchy than under a
> lousy, corrupted democracy. Never change a running system.
> 

I return to my original idea: the foundation should be to bring together 
the efforts of lots of people. We should trust those who run it and it 
should only be used for projects which benefit from a more centralised, 
organised approach. There's no point in making the up-keep of tt-news 
the main job of the foundation - but jobs like marketing, security, 
communicating project ideas, finding and gathering funding and so on 
would be better run by a small group of dedicated, full-time TYPO3 
developers and professionals.

In my mind, lots of this is just about getting things done sooner.

dan