Re: Should PostgreSQL Europe organisation settle down in France ?

[Oleg Bartunov <oleg ( at ) sai ( dot ) msu ( dot ) su>]

Hello,

I'm for upgrading PostgreSQL-FR to PostgreSQL-EU, since this is
a real european organization. I know Jean-Paul well and trust him.

The real goal of PostgreSQL-EU is a common PostgreSQL certification
program, not a donation, t-shirts and other bla-bla-thingies.

Italian guys were very well doing PgDay-2007 in Prato and I'm also
vote to continue PgDay in the same place. It's not expensive and friendly 
place.

Oleg
On Sat, 15 Sep 2007, Markus Schiltknecht wrote:

> Hello Damien,
>
> thank you very much for figuring this all out. It sounds like a plan!
>
> damien clochard wrote:
> > The response is unanimous : they are not comfortable with the idea that the 
> > french association would "disappear". It represents for them 3 years of 
> > work : Lots of time and energy to build this user group from scratch. 
> > Changing the name and goal of the association would somewhat mess things 
> > up. Besides  the association aims to provides help to **french speaking** 
> > users, which includes Canada, West Africa, etc. etc. Obviously this is out 
> > of the scope of an European user group. 
>
> Very understandable.
>
> > By the way we still consider that the PostgreSQL Europe is a great project, 
> > but we think it would be better to have two separate entities.
> >
> > Furthermore some of the member of the french "crew" are OK to provide help 
> > to create an European non-profit association under the french law. As i 
> > said previously it's a very common thing in France and i think this could 
> > be done within a few months.
>
> As you or Dimitri and Jean-Paul certainly already have experience with the 
> law and all the legal issues around non-profits in france, that make sense.
>
> Or does any other team have experience in its European country?
>
> > 1/ We need to make some kind of poll to see if creating PostgreSQL Europe 
> > under the french law is OK for every one, or if there are others 
> > possibilities.
>
> After all of the name-game on -advocacy, I'm not very excited about yet 
> another poll. Let's first check other options (if any) and maybe we can 
> simply reach consensus by discussion.
>
> AFAICT an additional association under the French law is the most reasonable 
> option so far.
>
> > 2/ If the "french association" proposition is accepted then we'll have to 
> > write together the legal statutes in English ( i have samples of generic 
> > statutes we can adapt to our need ). Once the statutes are written, we can 
> > translate them in every languages and propose them for acceptance. A wiki 
> > could be a good tool for all that stuff, imho.
>
> I'm offering help in translating to German. Although IANAL.
>
> > 3/ Once the statutes are accepted, we'll have to decide what will be the 
> > address of the association. I think the best idea is to locate the 
> > association in Paris . We'll also have to name 3 persons that will 
> > constitute  the "temporary Administration Board" of the association and 
> > make the official declaration to french authorities. This declaration will 
> > take a least one month to be "fully official" as french administration is 
> > not a very fast machine.
>
> <rant>Administration is slow per definition</rant> ;-)
>
> I'm fine with whatever location, but Paris sounds international. I guess 
> these three persons for the temporary Administration Board need to be French?
>
> > 4/ Once the the declaration is fully done, we can open membership.
> >
> > 5/ In February 2008, we meet at FOSDEM to make the first"General Assembly" 
> > and replace the temporary Administration Board with a brand-new 
> > democratically elected one. 
>
> Cool, seems somewhat tight, but if you think that's doable... Certainly 
> FOSDEM is a good meeting point, no matter how far we got with legal stuff.
>
> > 6/ After that the administration board meetings can be made via 
> > teleconference or IRC...  However i think that meeting each other "in real 
> > life" once in a year is mandatory.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > These 6 steps are based on my experience, on PostgreSQLFr members advices 
> > and on my interview with Tristan Nitot. Surely there are other ways to do 
> > this and some of them might be better than the one i exposed. What i like 
> > with this one is that it gets us on track and focused on a deadline : 
> > FOSDEM in February. That leaves us 5 months to build this thing up :-)
>
> I'd say: let's work on it to make it happen!
>
> Regards
>
> Markus
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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	Regards,
		Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, Research Scientist, Head of AstroNet (www.astronet.ru),
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University, Russia
Internet: oleg ( at ) sai ( dot ) msu ( dot ) su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(495)939-16-83, +007(495)939-23-83