[Buildbot-devel] Offer of membership to Buildbot into Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.

[Dustin J. Mitchell]

I had a chat with Pierre today, and he gave me some valuable feedback
on this process.

First, a question for the project-intake group: briefly, what does it
mean for an employee to sign the FSA if the work on Buildbot was done
for hire?  This is important for such employees to know how to have a
conversation with their legal department, if that's even necessary.

Second, I haven't done a good job of explaining why you all should
care.  So here it is:

1. Affiliation with a larger organization and a formal leadership
structure means more permanence and continuity for the project.  As it
stands now, if I get hit by a bus or start doing stupid things with
the project, it would be bad for the project.  With Conservancy's
fiscal sponsorship and a project leadership committee, the project is
larger than any one person.  Hopefully a multi-person project
leadership group can have higher bandwidth, too.

2. As a member of SFC, Buildbot will be a business entity.  If you
work for a company, that means the company can relate to Buildbot
directly, rather than to a nebulous "community" or, worse for me, to
some guy named Dustin.

3. As a part of a charity, Buildbot can accept donations - financial
and in-kind - from individuals and companies.  This means Buildbot can
acquire and hold the resources it needs to grow - servers, licenses
(maybe we can improve our P4 and BK support?), conference swag, travel
support for meetings, and so on.

I hope that, and an answer to the what-does-signing-mean question,
help folks formulate their thoughts on SFC membership.

Thanks!
Dustin