Re: Forming GNOME-UK

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

Bastien Nocera wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 16:21 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > Paul Cooper wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > * Thomas: Investigate setting up Gnome-UK as a club / registered charity / NFP so we can get a bank account and other infrastructure ready.
> > >   
> > I'd be particularly interested if anyone can shed some light on how 
> > debian-uk set up their account, and how they operate in this regard.
> >  From what I have gathered so far, we need either a document outlining 
> > our "Rules and Constitution" or instead, a "Memorandum and Articles of 
> > Association". At the very least we need a letter to confirm the 
> > organisation's aims and objectives, and to confirm that we are a 
> > non-profit making organisation. We will also have to have an appointed 
> > treasurer who will be able to deal with all the accounts. Appointing a 
> > treasurer obviously means we will have to have some sort of process, and 
> > inevitably some sort of eligibility to contribute to the process.
> My contribution to this is not going to be that great, as I have no idea
> about setting up an association.
>
> For the eligibility, it should be easy: piggy-back on the GNOME
> Foundation membership (hoping that everyone that needs to be in the
> GNOME-UK association is in the GNOME Foundation, otherwise it'll get
> messy).
Somehow I doubt that everyone who wants to be involved in GNOME-UK is a 
foundation member. I want this to be an inclusive group of GNOME users, 
not just the people who have made significant contributions to GNOME. I 
suspect the people with the most interest to get involved are those that 
haven't had a chance to contribute to GNOME or other Free Software 
projects before.
We currently have 77 subscribers to this list (much more than I had 
previously thought!). I want to encourage *everyone* to comment on what 
you expect from GNOME-UK, so that we can form some consensus on what our 
aims and objectives should be.
-Thomas