1. MEMBERSHIP OF A FREE SOFTWARE PROJECT FOUNDATION. 1.1. PURPOSE OF FREE SOFTWARE. Free software is about user freedom. The members of software support companies, however important they may be to a free software project are not a better class of users. Free software ensures that every user has the right to act as a developer and cannot be subservient to other developers who came previously. 1.2. ROLE OF MERIT. Free software communities can certainly function to some degree on merit. However, defering to some people over their merit in some domain such as development is very different from deferring to the same people over another issue such as community organisation. As others have stated, merit is significantly attached to individuals. Companies may have collective merit in some domains but merit is something which cannot be bought and sold. 1.3. OTHER MODELS. There are certainly software community organisations set up by companies in which one company is the originator and almost the sole developer of the software. Such companies are often pursuing a non-free development model in addition to the free software model. Ensuring a very significant level of representation for a company or set of companies in a free software organisation employs a free software organisation for some purpose other than user freedom. An organisation dominated by those associated with any particular company or set of companies should not be trusted to serve the best interests of the users. 1.4. BALANCE OF INTERESTS. Users are well aware that they need software support companies. Those attempting to safeguard software company interests need not fear user control of community organisations. 1.5. RULES TO PROTECT USER'S INTERESTS. Without carefully considered safeguards, organisations call all too easily become captured by particular business interests. For the time being, the Koha community has voted to organise itself as a committee of the Horowhenua Library Trust (HLT) in a large vote open to everyone in the Koha community. Just as the GPL has terms restricting software developers to protect user freedom in the software, the HLT Koha Committee has rules restricting committee membership from being dominated by an particular business interests which protects all user's interests in the community. The rules are posted at http://koha-community.org/koha-project-organization/horowhenua-library-trust... . There are common rules for the members of the committee about adequate notice of meetings, what constitutes a quorum, and exclusions for conflict of interest. Clause 5, rule 2 protects the small number of committee members, seven maximum members, from being captured by a particular business interest. "No more than 30 per cent of Members (rounded down) may be appointed who have a material financial interest in or are employees of the same organisation or whose organisations have a supplier / customer relationship. If at any time a breach of this clause is identified, the relevant Member last appointed shall resign." A 30 percent restriction allows two of the seven members to be associated with the same company. It prevents the committee from being captured by members associated with a single company aligning with only one other committee member. The smaller the number of members needed for conducting business, the greater the need for such a rule. I believe that most of us look forward to the prospect of a fully independent Koha foundation. However, I think that few of us look forward to the lengthy discussion about bylaws which will be needed to ensure that such a foundation remains truly independent. 2. WAY FORWARD. We should be discussing the points on which we can agree with PTFS as PTFS are members of the Koha community with interests common to all members of the community. Until we concentrate our attention and our approach to organisation around what we share in common, we will continue to have unnecessary strife. Criticisms of particular ill advised actions taken by some certainly have a necessary place to remind people of the good expectations which we all have of each others' behaviour. However, we have to be able to set aside some differences to have a productive discussion. Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com +1 212-674-3783