Fedora EMEA e.V. (was: Re: [Ambassadors] Re: What Fedora makes sucking for me - or why I am NOT Fedora)

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Dienstag, den 09.12.2008, 13:06 +0100 schrieb Max Spevack:
> On Tue, 9 Dec 2008, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) wrote:
> 
> >>> Fedora EMEA e.V. also seems to be a mostly dead tree. Of course we 
> >>> have founded the association as legal vehicle. But it would be nice 
> >>> to see where
> >>
> >> Interesting, I thought that it was going well.  Perhaps you should 
> >> ask FAmSCo to enlighten us here?
> >
> > I haver the same issue with EMEA as Robert. I'm french, we have our 
> > own association (and had it before the creation of EMEA). Our fee is 
> > 20?. EMEA is 128?. Guess which one I (and each and every french 
> > people) adhered to ?
> >
> > About them not being transparent enough, I must admit that I didn't 
> > try to interest myself about what they are doing, mainly because I 
> > will not adhere to it as long as the fee is so prohibitively high. For 
> > now, they are (to me) only a way to acquire really nice poloshirts 
> > (and thank you Joerg for taking care of that :)
> 
> Personally, I don't care at all about the membership fee for Fedora EMEA 
> e.V.  The value to me is not in getting Euros from already existing 
> Fedora members.  The membership fee could be 1 EUR, and I wouldn't care.

We need to decide what the e.V. really should be. If it is just a "hack"
for legal reasons, then it can remain as is. But if we also want to make
it a really powerful organization of the ambassadors, then this needs to
be revisited.

Let me repeat my question from half a year ago: The "ME" in EMEA stands
for "Middle East", the A for Afrika. Does anybody really think somebody
from Africa or the Middle East is able to pay 128 euros a year? Do we
have anyone from ME or A in in the e.V?

> The value of Fedora-fr's organization and Fedora EMEA e.V. is that they 
> are LEGAL ENTITIES that can hold resources, and that can accept 
> resources from multiple parties.
> 
> Read over my email from yesterday about the Q4 budget.  The fact that in 
> EMEA, I can have Red Hat make one money transfer of budget to another 
> legal entity's bank account makes my life so much easier, and it means 
> that even if we don't spend all the money in one quarter, it doesn't 
> disappear.  These non-profit organizations:
> 
> (a) allow us to do a better job planning our expenses
> 
> (b) allow non-Red Hat organizations to give money directly to the Fedora 
> Project without requiring them to give money to Red Hat, which is a very 
> important detail.
> 
> I believe that we are incredibly transparent about the manner in which 
> our budget is spent.  From the moment I became the Fedora Project Leader 
> in February 2006, I have tracked the budget that I manage publicly on 
> the Fedora wiki.

And you are doing very well with that, so I suggest to make the NPO's
budget available somewhere too. I don't care if it's in the fpo wiki or
somewhere on fedoraemea.org

> If there are specific questions that you (or anyone) has, feel free to 
> list them and I will do my best to answer.

Here is one, not only addressed to you, Max: Half a year ago I asked
what will happen if the ambassadors and the NPO disagree on a topic. The
answer I got was: This wont happen, because the NPO is committed to the
community of ambassadors. Is it really? As Jörg said [1]:
<----
"The Fedora Board has given Fedora EMEA e.V. the right to use the 
Brand "Fedora" (Name, Artwork, Logo ...) and requested quarterly Report
to have the overview that we act in there terms. If we will not do our
Job, they can take us this right - without this Fedora EMEA e.V. is
nothing."
---->
Has the Fedora Board ever received such a quarterly report?

I doubt that from a legal POV the Fedora Board even has the power to
request it, so the only 100% save solution I can think of is to write
this down in the NPO's statutes. ATM the statutes say nothing about the
relation from the NPO to the ambassadors or it's duties. We (or the
members of the e.V.) should work out an addition to the statutes that
everybody can agree on and that can be ratified during the next general
member meeting

Can you please put this onto the agenda for the next general member
meeting?

> 
> --Max

TIA
Christoph

[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-May/msg00154.html