Subversion stewardship organization.

This is to announce a new mailing list, [email protected],
and with it an initiative that has been developing behind the scenes
for some time.

The Subversion full committers are forming a lightweight non-profit
organization ("The Subversion Corporation", and yes, we like the name
too :-) ), to be able to represent Subversion's interests when
necessary.  For example, sometimes donors want a place to make a
donation: this new organization will be 501(c)(6) tax-exempt to
receive them, and gives us a framework for deciding what to do with
such funds.  There are also (rare) instances where someone uses the
Subversion name in a way that might cause confusion.  Fortunately,
these have mostly been unintentional and resolvable amicably -- but as
Subversion becomes more popular, that will not always be the case, and
we'd like to be prepared so we can act quickly if/when the time comes.

PLEASE NOTE THAT SUBVERSION'S OPEN SOURCE LICENSE REMAINS THE SAME.
Subversion is and always will be open source; this new organization
does not affect that.

CollabNet has volunteered to act as a trustee (i.e., to provide legal
services, pay filing fees, etc) on the organization's behalf.  The
non-profit is wholly independent of CollabNet, however, and the
trusteeship agreement will be revocable by either party.  Also, we
expect an outside counsel, the Software Freedom Law Center, to be
reviewing all these arrangements pro bono, once the organization is
fully incorporated.

Status so far:

Articles of Incorporation have been filed with the State of California
(CollabNet was the filing agent, but that has no bearing on
governance, it's a clerical service).  We are now discussing draft
bylaws, see http://www.red-bean.com/svn-org/ for articles and latest
bylaws draft (we'll get a real web site eventually, don't worry).  We
decided to go public at this point because the Subversion project has
always valued transparency, and we felt that should apply here too.
The voting membership of the organization will be the set of full
committers at any given time, but comments and suggestions are welcome
from anyone.

However: please post any comments to the new mailing list,
[email protected], *not* here (I've set Mail-Followup-To
on this message accordingly).  This new organization isn't about code,
features, release schedules, etc.  That stuff will continue to happen
on dev@ as before, while legal/financial stuff happens on the new
list.  The two spheres are quite separate; if there turns out to be a
lot of crossover discussion, we'll revisit the decision to have a
separate list.

If you plan to participate actively in discussions, please join the
[email protected] list.  If you wait and join the list
later, try to read its archives first, to catch up on what's already
happened.

Thanks,
-Karl Fogel