[Foundation-discuss] openafsfoundation.org ?

[Dave Botsch]

Jeff,

Thanks very much for your email.

The Board chose to move forward with a separate website as compared to a sub
directory for several reasons, but primarily for the sake of the IRS
non-profit status application. At present, the entire non-profit application
lives or dies with how the IRS perceives dependencies -- whether real or
imagined on their part -- to other entities and to the openafs.org website. To
assuage their concerns, it is prudent to use an independent URL for the
Foundation, as that is one way to demonstrate that the Foundation is an
independent and truly non-profit entity. As to the name (openafsfoundation.org
versus foundation.openafs.org), the board felt it was important for the
OpenAFS Foundation name to stand out as part of the site URL.  

Having said that, the two sites, openafs.org and openafsfoundation.org, will
necessarily have cross-linking wherever it makes sense and, of course, to
avoid duplication of content. In the long term, it may very well make sense to
have foundation.openafs.org and openafs.org/foundation both re-direct to the
new site.

The Foundation is keenly aware of the community's resource starvation -- no
community resources whatsoever have been used for the Foundation's creation
and current activites beyond the costs related to the initial incorporation in
Pennsylvania and mandatory application fee to the IRS for the national
non-profit status. One of the goals of the Foundation is to decrease this
"resource starvation" by advocating and promoting involvement in OpenAFS.

Transparency, including financial transparency of the community dollars, is
very much in the works. And, the upcoming Foundation website will be a big
part of such transparency.

The Board has been working very hard to meet the sudden, short, and immediate
deadlines in responding to additional IRS questions for the non-profit status
of the Foundation. A big part of that effort has been getting enough website
content up for the IRS to review and to be convinced that the Foundation truly
deserves a non-profit status. That includes a prominent Foundation mention on
the main openafs.org site. We have been working on a lot of content on the new
(unfinished) Foundation site, which, due to the IRSą specific request for
additional information and changes, has been our central focus over the past
months. As for where the site lives (independent of the URL), that's an
interesting question and far from decided. Again, at this point, the immediate
goal is to get up what needs to be up for the IRS's next round of our
application review.

-Dave Botsch
On behalf of the Foundation Board

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 10:00:05PM -0500, Jeffrey Altman wrote:
> To the Foundation Board,
> 
> Today David Botsch added a link to a new domain, openafsfoundation.org,
> to the openafs.org website via Gerrit.
> 
>   http://gerrit.openafs.org/#change,11695
>   http://gerrit.openafs.org/#change,11696
> 
> An openafs.org/foundation/ link has existed for many years and is
> seriously unpopulated.  Given the significant resource starvation of the
> OpenAFS community do we need another domain and another web server to
> maintain?
> 
> The openafs.org/foundation/ pages can be updated via Gerrit just as the
> rest of the web site is and is hosted out of /afs.
> 
> What is the rationale for the independent site?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Jeffrey Altman
> 



-- 
********************************
David William Botsch
Programmer/Analyst
@CNFComputing
botsch@cnf.cornell.edu
********************************