Discussions about the postgresql.eu statutes

Welcome to this wiki ! You can put here any comment about the future statutes of the European Association

Issues

1- Membership fee

What the statutes say

Article 5 : Any individual or legal entity can be an active member of the association, provided they pay an annual membership fee. The amount of the annual membership fee will be fixed by the Board of Directors.

Problem

dave page says : Why in that case, are we saying that people who wish to contribute and be part of the European Group will have to *pay* for the privilege of doing so? That is the most anti-Open Source way of running part of the project I can possibly imagine, and seems like an exceptionally efficient way to minimise the number of people that decide to help out.

Andreas Scherbaum : Ok, a membership fee for people is maybe not a very good idea.

Matteo Beccati : my only concern being that people living in countries with a local user group are required to pay, while others are not (if PG-EU membership is free). To me, it's somewhat discouraging people to form local groups.

Matteo Beccati : I'm afraid that most if not all of local groups will need a membership fee to be able to cover the basic costs.

Solutions

1.a : Keep the statutes as they are

Andreas Sherbaum : For the fee: my student organization has a similar rule in the statues. Every year the annual meeting redefines the membership fee for each student to 0,00 Euro. No problem.

1.b : No membership fee for people

Joshua Drake : You shouldn't have to pay to be a member of a PostgreSQL community organization. You should have a nominal expectation of participation though.

1.c : Optional membership fee for people

Damien Clochard : Let's say that instead of setting a standard membership free, we propose a “free membership fee”. I mean : any member is free to pay what he wants or what you can give.

2- Membership

What the statutes say

Problem

Joshua Drake : Why not just have individual membership in the spirit of SPI?

Dave Page : My understanding of what we all agreed in Prato was that PG-EU would be an 'umbrella' organisation, supporting the regional user groups. In that scenario, the only 'members' of PG-EU would be the regional groups themselves, and the staff/volunteers running it.

Dave Page : - If there is a local user group, you must join that, which automatically gets you membership in PG-EU. - If there is no local group, you may join PG-EU directly.

Damien Clochard : PostgreSQLFr is not a regional group. It is the association of the french speaking users of PostgreSQL. This includes people living outside of Europe ( Canada, West Africa, etc. ). So far the only official local group is IT-PUG

Solutions

2.a : Keep the statutes as they are

Magnus Hagander : Can't we just have people register for PG-EU and on the registration they specify “already member of pgsql-it” for example. If we're not charging money, it's not so critical.

2.b : Automatic membership for users of local groups

Dave Page : I can see us rapidly getting into a situation where some people try to join PG-EU, some their local group, and some both. Many users that are less passionate than us probably won't bother to join 2 users groups, so we end up with a situation where the local and EU groups are effectively in competition with each other for the membership.

2.c : Optional membership for users of local groups

Gabriele Bartolini : Those users that belong to a local group and accept the local group policy, might be informed that they could become members of the EU PUG if they want

3- Quorum

In the case we don't reach a quorum by mail/irc/whatever, we have another meeting between 6-30 days which goes without quorum.

Problem

Koen Martens says : It is mentioned “For the General Assembly to be validly constituted a quorum of 30% of the total number of members must be present or represented.”. Is there no danger of the association ending up in dead water if you require such a big amount of members to be present? In my experience, only the 'die hards' ever come to these GA's anyway. I think most GA's i've been to attract maybe one percent of the members, if not less (counting represented members also).

Solutions

3.a : Keep the statutes as they are

3.b : Lower the quorum

Magnus Hagander : How about lowering the quorum, but *also* require approval by the board? Meaning that the GA and the board have to both agree to dissolve?

3.c : Drop the quorum

Koen Martens : Now, a simple solution would be to drop the quorum. This is not uncommon. An objection to dropping the quorum could be democratic validity, but as said I think in practice you will always end up with a non-quorumed GA within 30 days anyway, so democractic calidity is not an argument.

4- takeover protection

Problem

Koen Martens : You might want to think about a safeguard against 'takeovers' too: a rush of new members right before a GA because some malicious party wants to take-over the voting.

Damien Clochard : Actally only the half of the Board of Directors is renewed every year and members of the Board of Directors are elected for 2 years. So a complete takeover would take 2 years

Solutions

4.a Keep statutes as they are

4.b : add more criterium for the member to satisfy

Koen Martens : There could be any other criterium that a member as to satisfy, not necesarilly monetary. Some organisation merely require you to register, others decide membership on a 'approved by the board' basis, or whatever. The crux being that you should have satisfied the chosen criterium for at least x months already to be able to vote.

5- Companies : sponsor or member ?

What the statutes say

Problem

Joshua D. Drake : I strongly suggest *not* having companies be members. If you want companies to be *sponsors* that is good but the moment you allow companies to be members, they will *expect* something for that money.

Gabriele Bartolini : I personally am a bit uncertain about allowing private companies to join the association as members

Jean-Paul Argudo : be a member is a stronger act compared to just giving money.

Solutions

5.a Keep the statutes as they are

5.b companies are sponsors

Companies are “benefactor members”

Benefactor members don't vote

Other ideas

Financial Controller

Koen Martens says : You might want to add 'financial controllers' to the statutes, who are to check the financial records and report to the GA on their validity.

Condorcet Method

Joshua Drake : SPI uses the Condorcet method of voting. Which at first I thought was dumb but using it for a while it seems reasonably fair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

Board turnover

Magnus Hagander : I think a clean way to do that in pgeu is to vote two members for 2 years and one member for 1 year (since we're only getting 3 members in the board for now - the org is small!). That way it solves itself. Doesn't need to be in the statues, but we need to put it in the election info. Easiest way - the two people who have the most votes get two years, the one that gets in third place gets one year ;)

Questions

Will there be certified translations available in other languages? (Koen Martens)

Damien Clochard : Certified translations costs money If we have enough money to do that, why not…

Can you just make the GA electronic ? (Joshua Drake)

yes checkout Article 7

Samples of statutes of statutes and bylaws

IT PUG : http://www.itpug.org/pdf/statuto.en.pdf

PostgreSQLFr : http://wiki.postgresqlfr.org/doku.php/statutes

SPI : http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/by-laws

Mozilla Europe : http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/about/statutes/

— damien clochard 2007/11/04 13:20