[Zope-dev] Zope Corporation's Initial Reaction on the ZF Comments

[Tim Peters]

[Chris McDonough]
> ...
> The Apache Software Foundation has 9 members
> (http://www.apache.org/foundation/board/).

Their board of directors has 9 members, but the ASF has many more
members than that:

    http://www.apache.org/foundation/members.html

> I don't recognize all the names, but at least three are definitely coders, and
> companies are not mentioned at all.  Their bylaws have no math in them for
> retaining board seats based on payment into the foundation, but maybe
> there is some informal agreement.

I doubt it, because the Python Software Foundation's (of which I'm a
director) bylaws were modeled on the ASF's.  For both, you can become
a member only by being nominated by an existing member, and then voted
in by a majority of existing members.  Anyone (regardless of whether
they're a member) can sit on the board, and the board is determined
solely by membership vote.  So any informal agreement would have to be
embraced by a majority of the members to be effective, and that's just
unlikely.  For the PSF, a sure way to get on the Board is to say
you're willing to do it <0.3 wink>; I imagine it's similar with the
ASF.

We should note that the ASF and PSF are both 501(c)(3) non-profits
under US tax law, which puts imprecise but serious legal bounds on how
much they _can_ be "controlled by", or benefit, a small group without
getting into deep legal doo doo.  In effect, we endure those
restrictions so that US contributors can get a tax deduction, and to
make legal actions against us especially unattractive (this one's
complicated, but it's not a coincidence that you don't hear about many
people suing the Red Cross <wink>).  I don't know which part of the
non-profit spectrum the Zope Foundation is aiming at, but I'd guess
that the ZF wouldn't want to hassle with a charity's legal
restrictions (yup, the PSF is a "public charity" in US legal jargon,
same as the Red Cross).