update

[astolat]

I want to say generally that this project is going to be a marathon, not a sprint -- we want to keep moving forward so enthusiasm doesn't flag, but we also don't want to rush or lock ourselves into an early hasty decision.

What's happening right now:

• We have a layout thanks to _workinprogress! The mods are working on the userinfo and posting policy for this comm, and we have people working on collecting volunteers and suggestions and a general summary from the original giant discussion.
  
  
• General discussion is still continuing on that original thread. Once the summary is posted, I will close down that post (just freezing rather than making all comments vanish -- no worries!) so the continuing discussion can move over to here.
  
  
• I'm putting together a small working group of volunteers with professional experience in the legal/nonprofit/corporate setup world to help figure out the right kind of corporate structure to do this with. (If you have such experience and I haven't emailed you yet, please drop me a line! astolat at livejournal reaches me if you don't want to comment.
  
  
• I'm starting to hit people up to do some research for us on various things like software tools that have been mentioned in the discussion.

As a rule, we'll want discussions here to stay open for a while before any action is taken. Stuff on lj tends to fade from sight pretty quickly, so I would really like to encourage subscribing to email notifications for posts on this group, and thumbtacking any posts dealing with areas you are interested in.

Please do chime in even if you are coming to a discussion late -- ideally we'll make it a habit to recruit someone to collect up a summary after discussion has died down. Also -- please use the subject line in lj comments if you think of it, so that if discussion gets large, it's easy to see the main point of a particular collapsed thread while skimming.

Addressing a few specific concerns:

• On ownership/organization: I'm running with the ball and doing a bunch of stuff unilaterally right now to get this off the ground, but I want to make clear from the start that my goal is to set up an organization to run and own this project that is not under the control of/dependent on any one person, with both a strong decisionmaking process and accountability to the community.
  
  
• On the financial side: Fiscal responsibility is critical. We will not start out with idealistic guarantees that just ask the whatever high atop the thing to smite us. *g* However, we will absolutely be not-for-profit, and will do our level best to make the donation model work. The issue will clearly be the long-term. We will have to do some research and learn as we go both how much money we will need, and how much we can consistently raise under a donation model.
  
  
• On the legal side: we will absolutely be getting professional legal advice right from the start.

Also, we are going to have fun. :)

Comments

Re: Legal structuring issue

[astolat]

Unfortunately, while there is a possibility that incorporating elsewhere might prove to be better in a lawsuit down the road, the value of that possibility is vastly outweighed by the value of the substantial professional experience with US regulations/institutions we already have among the current volunteers, and the potential for obtaining US nonprofit tax-exempt status (which will be critical for fundraising and maintaining the donation model).

We absolutely should do internationalization work to open up the archive to non-English-language speakers, and as time goes on and we build up a larger body of volunteers, we may one day be able to either put together a sister organization or possibly move the archive itself in a country with more favorable regulations and legislation, but I think we would never choose to move somewhere unless we can put together a committee of volunteers who are already extensively familiar with the law in the new location.

Re: Legal structuring issue

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

What I meant was more along the lines of asking about it - at large. Because you might have experts at your fingertips for incorporation in other countries (yes, even with tax-exemption status), but if everybody starts by taking for granted that everything will be american of course, no one might even think of coming forward with their knowledge? I just thought it was worth mentioning in the very early stages, but if all assumptions are made already, oh well. I certainly don't have the expertise required in any country, anyway. Only 2cents-worthing and that.