Task Teams » TWiki Association Bylaws Task Team

Goals

To define a set of bylaws or regulations for the TWiki Association.

The proposal may at the end consists of multiple versions of the same article for decision by vote at the first founding general assembly meeting. It is however the goal to have open debates so we end up with a well addressed and discussed set of bylaws or regulations that can be accepted at the founding meeting.

The bylaws / regulations must at least contain these definitions

• The name of the Association
• The home of the Association (the legal home)
• The purpose of the Association
• Membership (how to become)
• Expulsion of members
• Annual General Meeting
  • The scope of the Annual General Meeting
  • Calling the meeting - how and when
  • Agenda
  • Voting
• Extraordinary General Meeting
• Board
• Decisions by the Board
• Finances and responsibility
• Financial year and accounting
• Changes to the regulations of the association

• Sub-goal: Define a common terminology. English is not just English. Same thing is called different things in different variations of English. We will use the words that makes the rules most easy to read for non-english speaking.
• Arranged the debate topics and put then on the agenda of community release meetings

Suggested Plan for the task team

• Define a complete set of basic articles for the TWiki Association We are 99% done and expect the last bits to be agreed the weekend of 11-12 October 2008.
• When agreed pass it to the Interim Governance Board for approval
• When articles are approved invite all members of the community to participate in the founding General Assembly meeting. Invitation includes the Articles of the Association proposed.
• Founding General Assembly meeting to be held 4 weeks after the invitation is sent out.
• Participants can propose changes and amendments to the articles until two weeks before the founding General Assembly.
• The founding General Assembly will be held in Germany and in virtual space. The participants will be the initial members. New members will need to join by the agreed articles of the Association.

Required Powers

There are no special powers associated with this task. It will at the end be the founding general assembly that passes the entire rule set article by article.

Discussion

A set of debates will be run over the next months

• TWikiAssociationMembershipDebate is currently running. See GeorgetownReleaseMeeting2008x09x29 for a good discussion. Debate continues on Codev.

-- JensHansen - 29 Sep 2008

JensHansen and I are going to contact the board of KDE e.V. in order to exchange some experience about their structure and how it perform. Also it would be nice to use their articles, cause sometimes they are copyrighted by the lawyer.

-- AndreUlrich - 01 Oct 2008

We got an answer that KDE e.V. has written the texts by themself, so there is no copyright by a lawyer on it. They are glad to help us out with their knowledge and we can use their association text. There are some questions remaining we will ask them about their experience with their association.

-- AndreUlrich - 02 Oct 2008

After a talk with the KDE e.V. Vice President we sure, that the articles and bylaws of KDE suit the needs for the TWiki association very well. He point out minor issues which they will fix in future revisions, which we can correct in our version right from the start.

The KDE people are very helpful and we are glad that we can use their materials as a jumpstart for our association

-- AndreUlrich - 05 Oct 2008

We really need the blessing from the Interim Governance Board. I may be one of its members but I cannot bless myself.

-- KennethLavrsen - 05 Oct 2008

I have received blessing from Michael and Crawford. Turning status to running.

This means that we will go ahead with planning an open founding general assembly. Invitation will be sent out on twiki-dev and to all members of the TWikiCommunityGroup the minute we have the two conditions met.

• This team has finished the initial rules which will be made public when we are done with them. This is within a few days!
• The Interim Governance Team has approved the rules and the date of the founding general assembly. What can delay this process is if the negotiations with TWiki.net delays the license for the name and other details that directly affects the rule set.

You can be sure that this team is pushing hard for things to move fast.

-- KennethLavrsen - 07 Oct 2008