Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git in the SFC

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 17, 2010, 00:33 UTC
Message-ID: <20101217003315.GA18898@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20101217002034.GA18648@sigill.intra.peff.net>

I kept the announcement to the minimum, but a few follow-on points for the community:

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 07:20:35PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

> I'm pleased to announce that Git is now a member project of the Software
> Freedom Conservancy (SFC). The SFC is a not-for-profit organization that
> provides financial and administrative assistance to open source
> projects.

In case you are wondering, this has basically no bearing on the development of git code. We are not assigning copyrights to the SFC (though we could if we so chose), and the only real requirement it makes on the code is that we continue to develop as an open-source project. This just gives us a legal entity for doing any monetary things, or handling contracts or license enforcement should it ever be necessary.

There is a committee of liaisons to the Conservancy consisting of Junio, Shawn Pearce, and myself. Doing anything (e.g., spending money we have in our account) requires a majority vote of the committee. The committee can be expanded with new members by a vote of the existing committee.

All of that is in our contract with the SFC. There's no official procedure for doing something like holding a periodic community-wide election. If somebody wants to organize such a thing, I'm sure the committee would be happy to recognize the results by adding in whoever wins the election. For starters, we went with the simplest thing.

> Among other things, the SFC will now handle any project money that Git
> receives (e.g., Google Summer of Code money). They will also accept
> tax-deductible donations on behalf of git that will go to git's project
> fund.

Note that we don't really have a planned use for any money. In the past it has mostly gone to helping developers (especially students with no money) make it to the GitTogether. If you do feel like donating money, you might also consider making a suggestion of what to do with it. :)

You might also consider donating directly to the SFC. Their mission is good, and git indirectly benefits by having access to their services. For donations earmarked for git, we give the SFC 10%.

If you have any other questions about what this means for git, or suggestions on how it could or should impact the community, feel free to ask. I probably won't have good answers, but Bradley Kuhn from the Conservancy (cc'd) will.

-Peff