[scribus-dev] Scribus e.V.

["Christoph Schäfer"]

Hi guys,

We have finally cleared the first hurdle, as the District Court has approved the statutes and articles for Scribus e.V. Please find attached two PDF files, one with the official and approved German text, and another one with an unofficial English translation. It would be great if some native speakers of English could check the English version for grammatical correctness and typos, as it has seen some substantial changes since Greg Pittman has proofread a previous version.

There have been some concerns regarding two clauses in the charter, namely:

1) §7(1) "The managing committee consists of 3 persons, namely the chairman and two vice chairmen." Shouldn't there be a treasurer? Ideally, yes, but it isn't required by law. Also, given the fact that potential members are spread all over the world, the court advised me to keep the committee as small as possible. Moreover, as far as I can tell, no potential (founding) member is an expert in accounting, so I thought (and the court agreed) that it's probably the best to let the management committee do the accounting jointly.

2) §7(1): "It takes one person of the managing committe to act on behalf on the association." Other than may be expected by the wording, this doesn't give a single person too much power. It only makes sure that a single member of the managing committe can _execute_ decisions made by the committee or the general meeting, for instance hire an attorney for the association or transfer money for a given purpose. Otherwise, it would always take two or three persons to execute _any_ decision, even to register a change of address with the court or to write a letter and pay for the stamps. I have inserted this clause because the court advised me to do so.

If anyone disagrees with my choice of KDE e.V. as an "heir" in case Scribus e.V. is going to be dissolved, I can easily insert something else, eg. Unicef or the FSF Europe. This can be done during the founding meeting.


What happens next?

First, we have to wait for approval by the tax office. The parts in red are subject to review by the tax office.

Then we need to have a founding meeting, vote on the charter, elect the first managing committee and set up a scale of fees. Next, I'll get the documents certified by an attorney and register the association with the court. Once the court has published the registration, we are an e.V. (= "eingetragener Verein" = registered association), and I can create an account, as well as register the members of the managing committee as authorised persons with a local bank. Finally, we'll have to set up a PayPal account for donations and announce the stuff on our websites, our mailing lists, and in IRC. At that point I'm going to need a vacation ;)

How long will it take?

No idea. It depends on the tax office. The other steps are in our hands, but we can't speed up the review at the tax office. I already had a meeting with a civil servant at the office, since he didn't understand the concept of Open Source, but I have directed his attention to KDE e.V., which is a registered German non-profit association, so I hope he'll send me the approval soon.

To be honest, I had no idea how much work setting up a non-profit would be, but I hope it's worth the efforts ... ;)


Regards

Christoph
-- 
GMX startet ShortView.de. Hier findest Du Leute mit Deinen Interessen!
Jetzt dabei sein: http://www.shortview.de/wasistshortview.php?mc=sv_ext_mf@gmx
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Satzung-Scribus-genehmigt.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 69501 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus-dev/attachments/20080911/29d7a619/attachment-0002.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: statutes-scribus-approved.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 65902 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus-dev/attachments/20080911/29d7a619/attachment-0003.pdf>