XBMC Foundation documentation
#1
(2012-02-28, 11:54)Robotica Wrote: sorry. I will open up a new topic.

Ontopic:
Hopefully the new forum keeps some room for discussing the philosophy, the foundation and it's governance. Right now those topics tend to go out of control.

I saw the WIKI pages. Good start. Is there a place to discuss all this? I would suggest opening a seperate section on the forum to discuss all this.
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#2
Because you seem to have some problems in essential organisation for running software from within a charity foundation. It's an important suggestion to speed things up since you didn't come far in 3/4 years.
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#3
If you can talk about it without being rude then this thread can stay open. Your choice.
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#4
You want more open transparency, I take it?
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#5
what i want isn't that important. It's about xbmc. Right now, there isn't much to talk about: it all starts with sharing the letter of incorporation and the bylaws. Some people, including some from boxee and sflc already put a lot of thought in it...
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#6
maybe this old blogpost can help a little: bulkzooi.wordpress.com/market/the-foundation/
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#7
(2012-10-12, 18:18)Robotica Wrote: I saw the WIKI pages. Good start. Is there a place to discuss all this? I would suggest opening a seperate section on the forum to discuss all this.

I'll be honest, after reading that old blog post, I have a great deal of difficulty taking you at all seriously. You spend a lot of time throwing out fairly serious claims, like tax evasion, without knowing the law of those claims. When you say that you worry we are violating the GPL or worry that Boxee is violating the "spirit" of the GPL (whatever that means), you are coming off as a conspiracy theorist, not because you are making serious allegations, but because you clearly don't understand the law, the nature of software licensing, and the nature of non-profit organizations. Yet, regardless of your lack of knowledge of all this publicly available information, you continue to toss out essentially imaginary theories that not only may or may not be true, but also may or may not be legally and morally wrong in the first place.

XBMC is allowing Boxee to violate the SPIRIT of the GPL? The GPL is a simple licensing agreement. There is no "spirit." Either they ARE violating the licensing agreement, or they are not. Everything else is simply made up fantasy land.

I am more than willing to have a conversation about the Foundation. Just a few weeks ago, a student popped onto the forums and asked many questions about the nature of the foundation, and we had a fairly positive chat. I am unwilling to have a conversation about the Foundation, or anything else for that matter, with a person who presumes that a failure to answer or a failure to answer ENOUGH is evidence of malfeasance or poor stewardship or whatever phrase we've picked up this week to nastily put down the developers of software that you claim to really appreciate.

I'm going to ignore most of the more crackpot statements made in your blog, like how XBMC team members are somehow getting rich on donations and evading taxes by hiding behind a non-profit, because they are both lunacy and legally ignorant and therefore not worthy of a reply.

But I will correct a pure falsehood. In your blogpost, you wrote "Mentioned topic made me being banned from their domain to this WordPress-hide out. As you can read, I was banned since teamXBMC doesn’t like the subject of the topic; not because I did something wrong." This is false. Over and over again, you did something wrong. You took a forum thread that was about one topic, and turned it into yet another bitch session about the Foundation. The original poster wanted to talk about discovering XBMC in a hotel? Screw that, you said. I want to talk about how the Foundation is morally corrupt, so I'm stealing your topic and turning into my own topic. Again. And again and again. You have stolen the conversation thread on dozens of topics and twisted it to the only topic that appears to interest you. Your casual disregard of other users has resulted in your being banned.

If you are seriously so concerned about the XBMC Foundation, here is my suggestion to you: stop using XBMC. Don't donate to the Foundation. Don't sing the praises of XBMC. Because you are not a member of the Foundation, you have absolutely zero say in how it is run and how it ought to be run. You lack any conceivable form of standing. The only possible way you can influence the organization is with your wallet. Don't like us? Then don't donate, and don't bring along other people who might donate. That's your option.

From this point forward, if you would like to be a positive member of the community with an interest in the Foundation, then be one. Talk about possible ways in which the foundation can be more open or better. Perhaps we could post a quarterly chart, showing how donations were used, and you could do some research on how one might put together such a chart using the PayPal API. Perhaps you could talk about some interesting new things that some other FLOSS organization is doing and wonder if it might be something XBMC could benefit from emulating. You have a lot of options.

But if you continue to steal the threads of others and write accusing statements against members of the foundation that are based purely in your own fantasyland, then you will be banned immediately and without further warning.
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#8
Interesting blog post. A few things:

You were banned for being annoying. Feel free to disagree, but that's pretty much what happened. Personally, I don't think it was good to have banned you, because that just feeds the idea that we are "hiding something", but they didn't know what else to do, and it was getting disruptive. It's just not in human nature to react nicely when you make these kinds of accusations.

Something we've been talking about a lot this year, and we even touched on at the last XBMC DevCon (wiki), is the fact that all the "paper work" kind of stuff for Team XBMC/XBMC Foundation isn't getting done, and we need to get it done. Our current board of directors wasn't getting things done (they're coders, and coders don't like paperwork), the structure of the Foundation wasn't even that clear, etc. So what are we doing about that?

Well, for starters, we got our formal XBMC Foundation membership list in order (will be published shortly on the wiki). Second, right now I'm actually the "voting admin" for the new XBMC Foundation Board of Directors election. We're currently nominating people internally, and by the end of October the Foundation members will have elected a new board that is more fond of paperwork. Issues like conflicts of interest have come up, so we're also going to have a spot on the ballot for the candidates to give full disclosure of potential COI. All of this stuff, the process, the results (except for who voted for who) will be published on the wiki once it's complete.

Then the new board will decide on a new president from the core 5 members (who have voting power) and then they'll decide on additional officers (who don't have voting power), and meet via teleconference about once a month (with meeting notes being published, most likely on the wiki). They can also set up various other formalities as needed, such as publishing to the public our financial records, etc, with help from other foundation members as needed (they can create committees, etc).

A few things you mentioned in that blog posting have actually been taken care of, or are in the process of being taken care of. I hope to get those things documented soon. For example, the Foundation has formally registered for the "XBMC" trademark in some countries (at least the UK, I believe. In the US we do not believe we are eligible for a formal trademark registration, but we can still assert a trademark claim.)

We already have the Bylaws up on the wiki, and I'll try to get the letter of incorporation up soon as well.

Then it will all be open in the air and you'll see that your paranoid accusations are wrong.

Anything else specific that I'm forgetting that would be good to publish to the public?
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#9
(2012-10-13, 13:08)Ned Scott Wrote: It's just not in human nature to react nicely when you make these kinds of accusations.

True.

And no thanks for helping this community to stay succesfull..

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#10
Is that all you can reply to? I'm giving you a chance to express how you feel we can be more transparent, since your accusations are based on assumptions. I'm trying to keep things calm and civil. You try to personally attack us using anything you can grab at, why? Why not focus on the issues and try to make them better? Pushing people's buttons is what gets you in trouble, not your viewpoint on the GPL, FLOSS, or the Team/Foundation's transparency. This thread is what you've tried to get before, a frank discussion on these issues, so let's discuss these issues.

So again I ask, is there anything else (from my previous post) that I'm forgetting that would be good to publish to the public?
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#11
Ok, but are you sure we are talking about the same XBMC Foundation? Because only since recently I find one in Delaware, while I did some research in the past.

And hopefully you understand that you don't publish to me but you publish since you want to be accountable to your core philantropic values.
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#12
(2012-10-17, 23:23)Robotica Wrote: Ok, but are you sure we are talking about the same XBMC Foundation? Because only since recently I find one in Delaware, while I did some research in the past.

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about here.

Quote:And hopefully you understand that you don't publish to me but you publish since you want to be accountable to your core philantropic values.

I'm fairly certain you misused the word "philanthropic", but that's besides the point. Everything we're doing as far as documenting and publishing things related to the Foundation has nothing to do with you or your constant belittlement and badgering of Team XBMC.
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#13
I have seen more than one xbmc foundation. And philantropic and charity are very much related to the foundation and thus the start of the discussion. That's why discussing needs a letter of inc.
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#14
(2012-10-18, 01:01)Robotica Wrote: I have seen more than one xbmc foundation.

Where?
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#15
sunnyvale, california and delaware.
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