Category: Foundation

Recently, we’ve blogged about the current status of the Foundation, and now would like to give you some short updates to tell you where we stand and what’s still to do.

The translation of our Community Bylaws into German has been done. It took a tremendous amount of work to retain the spirit of the English version, while adapting it to German legalese. The next step will be for the German members of the Steering Committee to review it, and then adapt the changes — which are not in terms of content, but in terms of language — back to the original English version.

The text as is, however, will most probably not be sufficient for statutes in German law. Some paragraphs are much too detailed, others miss important legal information as required by German authorities. So, in a next step, we will separate the existing document into the legally binding statutes, and some remaining bylaws — thus meeting the needs of the state, and retaining the full spirit of the document.

For the ideal German federal state to base our Foundation in, we are in contact with an association assisting in these topics. Based on active people who could stem the legal process, possible choices would be (in alphabetical order) Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Hesse or North Rhine-Westphalia. However, this very much depends on the local requirements, so we might decide for a totally different state as well.

So, in a nutshell: As soon as we have feedback from the assisting association and wrote the legally binding statutes, we can approach the federal states. Again, the process takes so long as we want to do as much as we can on our own, in order to save costs and therefore limit spending donations.

In the meantime, the Membership Committee started its work, and the application for Community membership has been opened. Everyone involved in LibreOffice and wanting to contribute also in the future is invited to request membership. It is not necessary to do so in order to be part of the Community, but approved members will have the right to vote on the various seats and roles within the Foundation. So far, we have received about 100 applications in just 24 hours — wow!

We have also been asked various times on how we want to cooperate with possible corporate sponsors. The current draft of the Bylaws has two bodies inside the Foundation: the Board of Directors, and the Advisory Board. The Board of Directors should be elected by those it represents, by those for whom we created the project: the Community. A seat in the Board of Directors should therefore be based on engagement and merit, and not be decided by any comittee, but rather voted upon by the Community. The Advisory Board is for donors and sponsors, and seats inside will not be voted on, but are based on recurring contributions either with resources or money.

We are still researching on how this can be managed in German law, but the basic principle will stay the same: Seats in committees representing the Foundation and legally running it should be voted upon. This does of course not mean that corporations and entities cannot be represented there, they also can become Community members and run for votes. However, given the history of the project and the way we achieved things so far, we do not want a seat inside the Board of Directors to be granted for a donation. It should always be voted on by the Community. We had a history where single corporations had a large influence because of their financial background, and we want to avoid that in the future for our Community. This basic principle is very important to all of us: Openness, meritocracy, transparency, all based on merit.

Another noteworthy thing: The German association OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V., current interim legal entity for The Document Foundation, has renamed itself to Freies Office Deutschland e.V., literally translated “Free Office Germany e.V.”. About 75% of the members agreed to that name change which has been planned for some months already, to demonstrate the independency from a single product or project. FrODeV’s support will stay the same, and on behalf of TDF a very warm thank you for all you have been doing for us so far!

So, exciting times ahead — thanks for being with us!

A lot of people have asked what’s going on with the Foundation, and where we stand exactly. After the successful launch of our fundraising challenge, that brought us the needed 50.000 € capital stock in just amazing eight days, it is clear that the future Foundation will be located within Germany. Still, the Foundation itself does not legally exist yet, and the German nonprofit association is acting as interim legal entity.

What are you doing at the moment? There are several steps involved before the Foundation will finally exist.

First, we are currently translating the community bylaws into a German version that we can hand over to the authorities. During this process, we found some minor issues that we resolved already. The process, however, is not simply about translating a legal document into another language, but it is also about adapting it to fit local law. We do not expect that there’s a need for many changes, but still, some minor edits might be necessary.

The second step then will be to send the changes back to our Steering Committee for final approval, which also involves translating the changes back to English. Given that we do not expect a large modification, this should be a rather straightforward process. However, we consider it important and crucial to review any necessary modification and discuss it with the community, as this will be the basis we will work on in the future, so it should be absolutely clear.

Once we have a final version of the Foundation’s statutes in English and German, that have been adapted to fit German law, we will then as third step evaluate the best German state to set up the Foundation in. Although the law is similar throughout Germany, Foundations have to be approved by the local governments, and the requirements to become approved varies from state to state and the type of Foundation planned. In addition, it is desirable to have someone living near the location where it will be established, to make logistics and communication with the governmental entities easier.

In a fourth step, we plan to discuss the statutes and the idea of our Foundation with all possible states we’ve come up in step three. Ideally, we then already can get the approval. If no state is ready to approve us yet, once again minor changes to the statutes might be necessary.

The fifth and last step will be the formal founding act, by which the Foundation will begin its existence as legal entity.

Aren’t there any votes? What about membership? Indeed, there will be votes. What happens in parallel to the legal paperwork is that we will be voting on a board of directors for the new Foundation, which then will later appoint also officers and other representatives, as set in our bylaws. For the board of directors, a formal vote by the community is important. They should be the ones voting on those who will represent them. In order for that to work, we have compiled a membership committee that soon will start its work. As soon as members have been identified and approved, we will prepare the vote for the future Foundation’s board.

Why does this take so long? Most tasks are done by pure volunteers, which of course limits the amount of time we have per day. In addition, to save money for lawyers and tax consultants, we try to prepare most of the paperwork oursevles. This saves paid time for external professionals, thus leaving us more money to focus on our mission and goals. In addition, setting up a Foundation is way more complicated than having an association, so things naturally take a bit longer.

Talking about money… your fundraising still runs? Didn’t you say you just need 50.000 €? Yes, definitely, any donation is highly welcome, and the challenge website is of course still online. As stated previously, the 50.000 € are required for the capital stock of the future Foundation, but it is money we cannot use for our daily work. Anything coming in on top of those 50.000 € will be directly used for budgets, like infrastructure, marketing, travels, trade show attendance, and of course for exciting new projects. We have compiled a list of questions and answers about the donations and budgets. So far, we already received 90.000 € in donations, giving us a budget of about 40.000 €, which is pretty amazing and exciting! Thank you very much to everyone who supports us!

Will you tell us how you will spend the money? We will pretty soon announce concrete examples and projects we like to fund, naming the exact amount of money needed, so donors know what they are donating for and what their money will do.

How can I donate? You can donate via bank transfer, via PayPal, and from now on also via Flattr. All details are compiled on our challenge website.

When will we see the Foundation, finally? This is probably one of the toughest question, as it depends on a variety of hard-to-predict parameters. My gut feeling tells me that sometime in the second quarter of 2011 will be possible, but do not pin me down on that.

I’ve just finished creating our Flattr account. In addition to the donations via bank transfer or PayPal, we now also accept Flattr. Respective links have been added to the blog, the planet and the wiki. Thanks for all your support!

The Community around LibreOffice, the free personal productivity suite, has accomplished the next major milestone in establishing The Document Foundation as a legal entity. In just eight days, some 2,000 donors from all over the world contributed €50,000 for the capital stock necessary to set-up the legal entity in Germany.

“We still can’t believe it,” says Florian Effenberger, Steering Committee member. “It happened in such a short period of time and was beyond our wildest expectations. You all really rock! On behalf of the Community, the Steering Committee would like to thank all the donors for their generous support.” (more…)

Yes, these are emotional words, but we just have to say: You are our rockstars!

In just one week, thousands of donors from all over the world did the unbelievable: You all donated more than 40.000 € for setting up The Document Foundation as legal entity. Honestly, we never ever even dreamed of achieving that in such a short period of time – what happened is just amazing, awesome and beyond imagination. Thank you, thank you, thank you so very much! You all contributed to the dream of a Foundation, and with 10.000 € left until we have the required capital stock, we’re close to making it a reality.

You all rock, and you are among the heroes of this Community!

Perhaps the most exiciting thing about nearing our capital goal is the diversity of individual donors, each one making a small but significant blow for a stable future for LibreOffice. Without all of you, we could not be where we are now, and better we are not reliant on any single corporation or donor which is a great source of strength for our community.

Our race for funds runs until March 21^st, and we hope for many more donations that not only help us in getting the required 50.000 € capital stock, but also a starting budget for the future Foundation. We’d like to share some thoughts on the next steps with you, as well as answering some of the most frequently asked questions on the race for funds and the creation of the Foundation. (more…)