[olpc-nz] Creating a local Sugar Lab

[Tim McNamara]

What do people think about formalising the relationship between NZ groups &
the global Sugar Labs? There are a few practical advantages of this and some
slightly more obscure ones. First, what is a local Sugar Lab? It's pretty
much exactly what we do now. From http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Local_Labs:

A local Sugar Lab would:

   - Adapt the technology and pedagogy to an area's culture and resources
   (e.g, developing activities and content specific to a region)
   - Help translate Sugar to the local language(s)
   - Support Sugar deployments in area schools
   - Create a local community devoted to the Sugar Labs principles, making
   Sugar more open and sustainable
   - Provide for communication,between the local communities and the global
   Sugar Labs community
   - Develop Local content and software that can be used not only for local
   purposes but also for the overall community
   - Host, co-host or partner in the organization of conferences, workshops,
   talks and meetings related to the use or development of Sugar,

I am interested in what other people feel. Given that I've got a few years
of legal training, I tend to view legalistic things like liability,
incorporation & tax as important. Others are likely to differ. People's
motivations matter significantly with these kinds of things. Does anybody
else think this issue is significant?

If people are in favour of exploring the idea, I will try to draft up some
documentation about what the options/issues are.


*Incorporation*
At the moment, NZ OLPC & Sugar folk are probably legally classed as an
unincorporated society, if anything. In order to establish a formal
relationship, we would probably need to incorporate in some way. The three
most practical options are a company, incorporated society & a charatible
trust. [note: the emphasis is skewed in favour of my own opinion,

If you're raising your eyebrow at a company registration, just remember that
we can have charitable clauses in the constitution restricting the ability
of the company to pay disbursements to shareholders. Companies are very
cheap to register. They only need a single director on the board. Because we
can have shareholders, long-standing volunteers can be given shares in the
company (which gives them voting rights & a sense of ownership). I tend to
think of it as a hybrid option between trust and an incorporate.

Charitable trusts are less democratic than incorporated societies, but
probably more secure. They don't require paid annual members, etc. You need
a certain number of trustees to look after the interests of the
beneficiaries- which I guess would be kids in this case. Trustees act in a
similar fashion to directors of companies.

Incorporated societies are groups of members that act in the interests of
the members. From memory, there is no board. All votes are democratic on the
basis of paid membership. 20 members are required to incorporate a society.
My experience is that AGMs can be really negative affairs, as a faction of
its membership vote on a proposal that the majority didn't really want.


*Impacts of change*
Formalising the relationship with Sugar Labs would grant us the legal right
to use their intellectual property, most formally their trade marks. At the
moment, if someone else were to use Sugar on educational software &
services, we would have a very hard time. Unregistered trade marks need to
establish a reputation in the courts.. which at the very least is time
consuming to gather evidence.

This means that we could be the official route to Sugar in New Zealand, in
case other vendors (ahem, my previous Kids++ attempt, for example) try to
sell Sugar to parents & schools.

Less practically, we would gain charity & tax-exempt status in the USA. No,
that's not a great help to us. However, it would make our application to the
charities commission, et cetera easier down the track.

Personally, I feel that it will increase the credibility of the NZ
OLPC/Sugar groups significantly. It will allow us to support deployments
more effectively.


Tim
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