<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 11:01 PM, Ralf Gommers <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ralf.gommers@gmail.com" target="_blank">ralf.gommers@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Hi,<br><br></div>Thanks Nathaniel and everyone else who contributed for pushing forward with formalizing Numpy governance and with this FSA. I'm quite excited about both!<br><br></div>Before I start commenting on the FSA, I'd like to point out that I'm both on the numpy steering committee and the NumFOCUS board. I don't see that as a problem for being involved in the discussions or signing the FSA, however I will obviously abstain from voting or (non-)consenting in case of a possible conflict of interest.<br><br><div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span>On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 7:57 AM, Nathaniel Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:njs@pobox.com" target="_blank">njs@pobox.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi all,<br>
<br>
Now that the governance document is in place, we need to get our legal<br>
ducks in a row by signing a fiscal sponsorship agreement with<br>
NumFOCUS.<br>
<br>
The basic idea here is that there are times when you really need some<br>
kind of corporation to represent the project -- the legal system for<br>
better or worse does not understand "a bunch of folks on a mailing<br>
list" as a legal entity capable of accepting donations, </blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>Additional clarification: NumFOCUS is a 501(c)3 organization, which means that in the US donations that are tax-deductable can be made to it (and hence to Numpy after this FSA is signed). From European or other countries donations can be made, but they won't be deductable.<br> <br></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">or holding<br>
funds or other assets like domain names. The obvious solution is to<br>
incorporate a company to represent the project -- but incorporating a<br>
company involves lots of super-annoying paperwork. (Like, *super*<br>
annoying.) So a standard trick is that a single non-profit corporation<br>
acts as an umbrella organization providing these services to multiple<br>
projects at once, and this is called "fiscal sponsorship". You can<br>
read more about it here:<br>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship</a><br>
<br>
NumFOCUS's standard comprehensive FSA agreement can be seen here:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/11YqMX9UrgfCSgiQEUzmOFyg6Ku-vED6gMxhO6J9lCgg/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://docs.google.com/document/d/11YqMX9UrgfCSgiQEUzmOFyg6Ku-vED6gMxhO6J9lCgg/edit?usp=sharing</a></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>There's one upcoming change to this FSA: the overhead percentage (now 4-7%) charged will go up significantly, to around 10-15%. Re4ason: NumFOCUS cannot cover its admin/legal costs as well as support its projects based on what the doc says now. This is still at the lower end of the scale for non-profits, and universities typically charge way more on grants. So I don't see any issue here, but it's good to know now rather than right after we sign.<br> <br></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">and we have the option of negotiating changes if there's anything we don't like.<br>
<br>
They also have a FAQ:<br>
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zdXp07dLvkbqBrDsw96P6mkqxnWzKJuM-1f4408I6Qs/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zdXp07dLvkbqBrDsw96P6mkqxnWzKJuM-1f4408I6Qs/edit?usp=sharing</a><br>
<br>
I've read through the document and didn't see anything that bothered<br>
me, except that I'm not quite sure how to make the split between the<br>
steering council and numfocus subcommittee that we have in our<br>
governance model sync up with their language about the "leadership<br>
body", and in particular the language in section 10 about simple<br>
majority votes. So I've queried them about that already.<br></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>I'd like to clarify that the Numfocus subcommittee is only meant to facility interaction with NumFOCUS and to ensure that if funds are spent, they are spent in a way consistent with the mission and non-profit nature of NumFOCUS. The same applies to possible legal impacts of decisions made in the Numpy project.<br><br></div><div>Regarding the question about the "simple majority votes" language, we can simply replace that with the appropriate text describing how decisions are made in the Numpy project.<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Hi all, there wasn't much feedback on this FSA, but I want to point out that it's actually quite important for the project. <br><br>Maybe everyone already thought about this when the governance model was agreed on (it does include a NumFOCUS subcommittee after all), but if not: read / think /ask question fast, because we're moving forward with signing of the agreement with the people listed at <a href="http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-dev/dev/governance/people.html#numfocus-subcommittee">http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-dev/dev/governance/people.html#numfocus-subcommittee</a>. <br><br></div><div>Cheers,<br></div><div>Ralf<br><br></div></div><br></div></div>