Re: [Fsfe-uk] Where are we now?

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2001-12-18 at 11:16, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> I guess this kills an I&PS: [...] "All members must have an equal say in the
> running of the society." [...] We didn't want to be 100% democratic for good
> reasons. An I&PS would enforce that, or am I reading this wrong?

Depends how you set it up. An I&PS could only have a few members, with
the majority of 'members' actually being subscribers, or something, to
whom we provide a service. In this case, the members would act something
like the board of a Ltd. 

The idea of a closed board for a Ltd. would be to act as protection for
the overall aims of the group. An I&PS doesn't necessarily need this
protection (I don't think?), so having 100% membership isn't necessarily
bad. We only want sufficient control/protection to prevent the aims of
the society being changing; I don't think we need any more than that.

My personal feeling is that the choice has to be between an Ltd. or an
I&PS - I don't like the idea of an unincorporated group for any length
or time, or the liabilities that would entail, and I like some of the
bureaucracy associated with incorporated structures (I think being open
about your dealings, etc., is good). 

To be honest, I would be happy with either. I prefer a Ltd., because it
is cheaper & I understand it better, but so long as there are no hidden
pitfalls I will go with either - I think the important thing is to get
setup.

> >     [ +10 ] Royal Charter (hahahahahaha)
> 
> Why not? Yes, I know we need another form first and can only do that after
> several years of building a good reputation. But why not as a goal for the
> long term future?

I think Royal Charters are there really to incorporate existing
unincorporated groups - I'm not sure we would want to spend that long in
a process that could concievably take ten years or longer, when we're
not guaranteed in any way that we would end up chartered. 

[BTW: we haven't established any voting rules as yet :) I hope everyone
is happy with voting 'in public': personally, I see it wholly as a
matter of opinion and will vote as I see fit, even if everyone else
disagrees with me! - but if anyone _does_ have a problem, make yourself
known (privately or publically), we can do things a different way. ]

Cheers,

Alex.

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