I just noticed from this announcement that Eelco is not at Tweag anymore.
Is the community going to be notified going forward when one of the members changes employers? I think this is relevant to the goal of transparency.
8 Likes
Yes. That’s why the names of the companies are attached in the post, in a transparent manner.
Thanks for calling that out - establishing transparency is one of the goals and especially in the begining it’s important to point out where you’d like to see more.
11 Likes
Not sure about Haskell and Plone, but I’m not sure successful the Rust Foundation has been… It definitely could’ve been worse, though (the fact that the Foundation is mostly separate from the project definitely helped).
1 Like
Sharing the invite and link to our open Zoom call for this Friday, July 1st at 17:00 CET.
Looking forward to seeing folks!
Topic: NixOS Board - Open Zoom
Time: Jul 1, 2022 17:00 CET
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 995 7243 5001
One tap mobile
+16699006833,99572435001# US (San Jose)
+13462487799,99572435001# US (Houston)
Dial by your location
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
Meeting ID: 995 7243 5001
Find your local number: Zoom International Dial-in Numbers - Zoom
Join by SIP
99572435001@zoomcrc.com
Join by H.323
162.255.37.11 (US West)
162.255.36.11 (US East)
115.114.131.7 (India Mumbai)
115.114.115.7 (India Hyderabad)
213.19.144.110 (Amsterdam Netherlands)
213.244.140.110 (Germany)
103.122.166.55 (Australia Sydney)
103.122.167.55 (Australia Melbourne)
149.137.40.110 (Singapore)
64.211.144.160 (Brazil)
149.137.68.253 (Mexico)
69.174.57.160 (Canada Toronto)
65.39.152.160 (Canada Vancouver)
207.226.132.110 (Japan Tokyo)
149.137.24.110 (Japan Osaka)
Meeting ID: 995 7243 5001
3 Likes
Starting in a few minutes.
Will there be a recording for those of us that can’t attend?
Did this happen in CEST (as opposed to CET) time zone? 
Most central European countries and the Netherlands are now +2 so seems like that.
We didn’t record this one as we hadn’t communicated ahead of time with participants that it will be recorded. I would want to record the next one for those that can’t join but just wondering if folks would be comfortable with that.
Discourse has a cool feature where you can insert a date/time and then it gets localized for everyone who is logged in. I suspect it would have avoided issues like this.
2 Likes
Awh 
Are there any minutes/notes/transcripts?
I can summarize the answers to the questions I asked:
-
The role of the board observer is there mainly to allow @grahamc, who is a trusted member of the community, to be part of the board, while at the same time ensuring that no more than one full member belongs to the same company. For all intents and purposes though, he will be a functioning member of the board, because it is not expected for voting to be contentious.
-
The board members will at some point put up their bios on a foundation webpage
-
The positions are unpaid. Expenses are reimbursed
9 Likes
Posted a recap of the meeting here → NixOS Board Meeting Minutes - July 1, 2022 - Governance - NixOS Discourse
5 Likes
Has there been any progress on this goal? I am in Canada and am interested in contributing this way. Some employers offer donation matches for charitable organizations.
6 Likes
I would hope that foundation does not obtain a tax-deductible charitable status in North America. The result would be corporations diverting profits away from taxes and towards paying cheaper developers in Europe. In Europe NGI is funding NixOS with public money after-taxes and in the US the National Science Foundation can ostensibly do the same.
2 Likes
The Foundation doesn’t pay any developers right now, does it? It mostly pays for infrastructure and provides financial support for some events. If private companies donate money to that purpose, which everyone can profit from for free, that seems like a fair deal to me.
Of course it would be bad if the owners of some companies that are also on the board would use that as a way to avoid paying taxes, but just the fact that that’s possible doesn’t mean it will happen.
I’d also be happy if the donations I make to the foundation are tax-deductible, it means that more of the money I spend gets used for the purpose I spend it on. Though I live in Europe, so that doesn’t fully apply to your argument.
3 Likes
I think companies should “donate” to the NixOS foundation if they benefit from NixOS. I as a US citizen I would benefit from companies paying their taxes, but if the donation wouldn’t happen without a tax incentive, I suppose I would benefit more from a donation as a member of the affluent developer class than the tax would benefit me as a common citizen.
1 Like
@ehmry I agree with your point as a matter of principle. But my experience of fundraising for charities suggests that most people (and I bet also companies, although my experience is more with individuals) will only give any significant amount of money to tax-deductible charities. So, even if it would be good to campaign against the whole system, there is at least the silver lining that we’d be taking mainly money that was never going to be taxed whatever we did. Probably.
4 Likes
lol! i like what you did there!
I apologize for jumping in late to this thread as I was dealing with a few unexpected events during October.
Going to try and answer a few of the comments:
@Lyndeno I’ve met with multiple legal teams and it seems that the process for Open Source technical non profits has had a slight change with a significant lowering in chance of success. Therefore I’ve moved this to a P1 (mid pri) based on that feedback from legal counsel. I plan to check on this again with at least two different firms in Q1 2024. Open for thoughts or feedback!
@ehmry I’m curious for more thoughts on this and your perspective as I’ve been viewing the benefits to the community to obtain a tax-deductible status as quite high since it’s a prerequisite for many companies when making more significant donations.
@iFreilicht The foundation has historically only paid to “keep the lights on” → Infra/financial/legal/community support. There are multiple discussions happening right now around the funding side across the community (notes from NixCon discussion groups NixCon Governance Workshop - Announcements - NixOS Discourse). The way I currently perceive it is across two areas:
- As we scale we are going to need more support/efforts to go into making our infra/“keeping the lights on” scalable and sustainable. The main example on my mind for this is our S3 Cache ( NixOS S3 Short Term Resolution! - Announcements - NixOS Discourse) where the foundation support fund developers to help provide a long term solution in a shorter timeline and this is why we have a set aside budget. This goes back to the main goal of the foundation to support Infra and make Nix live another day
(ideally many many days). - Thinking through how we can best utilize funds to scale/support/empower individuals, teams or areas of the Nix ecosystem which is what is being discussed in the various community threads.
@ehmry On the topic of “I think companies should “donate” to the NixOS foundation if they benefit from NixOS.” I very much agree with this and community teams have had discussion on the topic as well which are still open (part of the link I shared above). Curious if you have any thoughts on how this should be communicated to companies. Do you think we should have something more formal in place?
2 Likes