OK, although I know little about OSS, much less OSS foundations, the reference librarian in me couldn't resist ... Seems to me there's little point in re-inventing the wheel here, & to the extent that there are models available for successful and failed OSSF's, the Koha community should be taking advantage of these. Two highly relevant chapters from Steven Weber's The Success of Open Source: Chap. 6: Explaining Open Source: Macro-Organization Chap. 7: Business Models and the Law Collaboration, Leadership, Control, and Conflict Negotiation and the Netbeans.org Open Source Software Development Community By Chris Jensen, Walt Scacchi [on the NetBeans.org community] http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2005/2268/07/22680196b.pdf A couple of interesting CNET articles: What makes a good open-source foundation? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10159925-16.html Eclipse, a new model for open-source innovation http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9760440-16.html An article from the online journal, Open Source Business Resource Open Source Software Foundations / Zhensheng Xie http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/738 Communities that develop open source software (OSS) are virtual entities on the Internet, not legal entities. Some open source communities establish open source software foundations (OSSF) in order to protect their intellectual property and carry out contractual arrangements. As legal entities, OSSF help communities attain their long-term goals, hold community assets, provide resources to communities, and balance interests amongst different stakeholders. When OSS started to draw more business interests, commercial companies became involved with open source communities. The emergence of OSSF provides a good platform and opportunities for companies to exert their influence in a more official way. This article summarizes our recent research regarding the relationships between company involvement, governance, revenue, and OSSF. [-- note that this article was based on the author's 2008 Master's thesis on OSS foundations: "Open source software foundation: company involvement, governance, and effectiveness" -- should be available via Proquest UMI, or directly from the author] Perhaps one or more of the following organizations/ research groups would be willing to provide pro bono consultations: Board members of existing (or perhaps failed) OSS Foundations -- many candidates here. Talent First Network (Carleton Univ.) http://www.talentfirstnetwork.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page Free/Libre Open Source Software Research (Syracuse Univ.) http://floss.syr.edu/ Big management consulting firms -- this would be a fascinating project for them: McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Booz. Or maybe a business school professor would be interested in developing a case study. Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation, launched just a few days ago, with the mission of "enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities" http://codeplex.org/index.aspx Food for thought, at any rate. Cab Vinton, Director Sanbornton Public Library Sanbornton, NH