[OpenAFS] Re: [OpenAFS-devel] An open letter from the OpenAFS Council of Elders

[Brian Sebby]

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 04:11:40PM -0500, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
<snip>
> Membership should be open to both individuals, as well as corporations 
> and organizations. I would be happy to individually pay between $5 and
> $25 a year membership dues to support OpenAFS. I also think that anyone
> contributing code should be granted membership without a fee.
> 
> Corporate or large organization dues should be substantially larger, and
> have some sort of marketing/branding/trademark benefits associated with
> it.

I think it would be a great idea to have some sort of membership option in
an OpenAFS non-profit organization.  OpenAFS has been asking for donations,
but unfortunately, Argonne and a number of other organizations (mostly
government and academic) simply can't donate money without any benefit back
to our organization.  We could contract with some of the folks providing 
AFS support if there was a feature we needed, but it's simply out of the
question for us to be able to just donate to AFS.

With a membership option, however, it would allow us to make a case for
giving money to OpenAFS since we do get something tangible - the membership.

I don't know what a membership would give you, but a newsletter, maybe a
"members only" section of the website (although honestly I can't see that
giving any benefit over the mailing list - this is possibly one of the most
useful mailing lists I'm on), or a discount to the OpenAFS Workshop, etc.

I am definitely in favor of OpenAFS incorporating as a non-profit.


Brian


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