Re: European Foundation

[Bart Decrem <bart linuxone co kr>]

Hi Jaime, Rodrigo,

I'd be happy to provide some basic assistance where I can.

The basic question you need to ask is: what is the purpose for the
GNOME Fdn Europe?  What is its mission in life?  Why do we need another
legal entity?

The only real reason to set up a legal entity in this case is to be able to
accept donations and pay out funds.  So what activities do you want to
engage in that require money?

Once you've established that you want to do things that require a legal
entity, then the next question is, which country to incorporate in and
which legal status to use.

Here's what we did for the GNOME Foundation that's incorporated in the US:
- we spent a TON of time on this list talking about the role of the
foundation in providing some central governance for the GNOME project,
particularly in regards to release coordination, conflict resolution and
making announcements on behalf of the projects.  Those tasks want to be
centralized, and they are not limited to the US.  Out of that came a
charter for the GNOME Foundation, which I helped put together, and which
you can find at http://foundation.gnome.org/charter.html.
- Sun Microsystems then provided an attorney who worked with me to
determine that we would become a public-benefit non-profit corporation
incorporated in the state of California, and he did incorporate us in
California.
- the next steps, in the US, in the incorporation process, are to complete
by-laws, set up a bank account and apply for tax-exempt status with the tax
service (the IRS).  The attorney kind of stopped doing work for quite a
while and these tasks have not been completed.  However, it's looking like
we're going to get this done one way or another over the next month or so.

So that's the process we went through in the US.  Let me know if you have
other specific questions I can help with.  Still, your basic questions are:
(1) what does the GNOME Fdn Europe want to do (2) what legal entity do we
want to create, and can we do it Spain.  Those are questions I can't really
answer for you.

Cheers,

Bart


Rodrigo Moya wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I've received this text from Jaime, a guy who's trying to get the
> European Foundation running but who can't write to foundation-list. So
> please, CC to him (jaime gcubo org) any response.
>
> ========================================================================
> Jaime Anguiano Olarra said:
>
> Hi people from the Foundation;
>
>         I am trying to get the European GNOME Foundation running. Since
> the B.O.F. at
> GUADEC II, I have been asking some friends, who are experienced in law,
> which is the best
> way to do that here in Spain in order to see if Spain is a good choice
> to stablish the European
> Foundation. They all say I should get the whole documentation that was
> used to
> stablish the
> GNOME Foundation to get known exactly about what we need to do. I wrote
> to Daniel Veilhard
> asking him for help and he told me that he would write to the board
> list. Since then some
> people wrote to me once telling me a few advices, but no usefull info. I
> wrote
> them back, but
> nothing has happened. Please, if anyone there can help me... I just want
> to see the European
> Foundation running, so if you can help me with this it would be great
> for me.
>
>         Yours;
>
>         Jaime.   <jaime gcubo org>
>
> Jaime Anguiano Olarra
> Avd. La Leala N\xba20
> BEnalm\xe1dena Costa 29630
> M\xe1laga
> Spain
>
> Phone: 34952441013
> Cellular: 34630622578
> =====================================================
>
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