[OTR-dev] What about an OTR org.?

[David Goulet]

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Paul Wouters:
> On Thu, 10 Jan 2013, Greg Troxel wrote:
> 
>> David Goulet <dgoulet at ev0ke.net> writes:
>> 
>>> So here goes. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to try
>>> to create an OTR foundation or non profit organization or
>>> whatever we can think of (OTR project à la Tor) that would
>>> basically regroup libotr
> 
>> This conflates two separate things:
>> 
>> nonprofit structure and registration
>> 
>> a group of people to actually do things
>> 
>> Setting up a nonprofit in the US is hard and takes years; one
>> needs to have a board, file annual reports, etc.  I suspect it's
>> just as hard in Canada.   This has very little to do with
>> actually hacking on code.
> 
> Indeed, and would only take away more time from the coding part
> for those people involved.
> 
> The real issue is getting good people with free time.

+1

However, one of the idea behind this email was how do we bring those
people doing OTR in their free time under a roof that is yes organized
in a legal way so resources can be obtain to improve/maintain the
project(s). Is it necessary so we don't lose developers/projects?

I do like the idea of an umbrella organization since OTR is clearly
not big as Apache or even Tor. Still, I think a discussion is
important in order to see if the risks involved and end results of
such structure could worth the time and effort for the _growing_ OTR
community and future projects. I'll have to agree with all of you that
a non profit org. can be a difficult legalish paper work managing
burden _especially_ when looking for grants and funding.

As for the main libotr in C maintain by Ian, is it maintain on his
free time or part time or ? Is it at a stage that a full time
maintainer/developer should be consider? ... I personally don't know
but could be good to discuss it also since it's quite the backbone and
reference implementation of all other OTR piece of code.

Anyhow, thanks for the feedback!
David

> 
> Paul
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