IMO, if we think of it in the long term, we could be organized as the Mozilla "group" : - an association in Europe certified tax-exempt - a foundation in U.S.A certified tax-exempt but, that's not so straightforward, and we will certainly ask for help for other organization in the build time. As Louis said : Let's start with the help of Gnome foundation, and slowly build our "Libre graphics Organization" step by step. But we have to discuss this steps. Another thing is disturbing for me (with Hin-Tak Leung intervention): what can we do for peoples in Asia, Oceania or Africa ? -- yagraph <div class="gmail_quote">2010/6/4 Hin-Tak Leung <<a href="mailto:hintak@ghostscript.com">hintak@ghostscript.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> Regarding surrogate organization - as well as the next LGM location. One thing I was debating with myself during the last hours of LGM, seeing as so many of you are keen on having LGM on Vietnam and Montreal, etc whether to make the suggestion and I didn't want to sploit the enthusiasm of others. The Linux Foundation have some contacts, experiences etc for organizing small specialist conferences as "satellite" conferences to the regular large ones arround the world, which essentially means you share and off-load some of the burden of organization logistics but otherwise it is a small conferences which just happens to share some of the facilities and happens at the same time of a big one. A few of the recent kernel-wireless mini-summits and open-printing summits are like that - but the communities and attendence numbers of either are quite small (about 20-40 people in either I think, rather than the 80+ in LGM - I have a different "hat" sometimes so I get invitations to both) compared to a main one which is in the 300+ attendence region. So having a surrogate under the Linux Foundation unbrella is a possibility. OTOH, freedesktop (xorg) probably also have something of that sort? <div><div></div><div class="h5"> --- On Fri, 4/6/10, Dave Crossland <<a href="mailto:dave@lab6.com">dave@lab6.com</a>> wrote: > On 3 June 2010 22:27, a.l.e <<a href="mailto:ale.comp_06@xox.ch">ale.comp_06@xox.ch</a>> > wrote: > > in countries like germany, france and switzerland it > is very easy to set up an association. > > Right - same as UK. > > Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the UK you'd still need to, > after > registering, write and agree on a constitution that defines > how > elections are done, run an election to set up a committee > with a > chair, membership secretary, treasurer, and perhaps other > roles. Then > the treasurer needs to open a bank account and file a tax > return (or > pay an accountant to file one) - and all the members and > the public > need to trust that the committee will use the money > legitimately and > fairly. > > Using a surrogate organisation means the administration of > the bank > account, filing a tax return, and the constitutional > decisions are all > taken care of by a recognised entity that the members and > the public > can trust to do things legitimately and fairly. > > So no matter what the goals of the LGA are, I suggest > starting out > with a surrogate organisation and later founding our own > entity when > we really need to :-) > _______________________________________________ > CREATE mailing list > <a href="mailto:CREATE@lists.freedesktop.org">CREATE@lists.freedesktop.org</a> > <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create" target="_blank">http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create</a> > _______________________________________________ CREATE mailing list <a href="mailto:CREATE@lists.freedesktop.org">CREATE@lists.freedesktop.org</a> <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create" target="_blank">http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create</a> </div></div></blockquote></div>