(for ppl anxious of what will KohaLa be, and ppl that want to discover some french specifics ;-) ) MJ Ray a écrit :

MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote: Unhappily, it looks to me that, if those proposals pass:

Hello MJ, Fortunatly, you seem to ignore what is a "french NPO"... Otherwise, you would have realised how "ridiculous" your concern are. ("Ridiculous" in french can have 2 meaning : one being "really small, and totally useless". No negative sense here. I'm not sure it's the same in english, so I specify ;-) )

- Membership will not be open to all, requiring learning KohaLa's rules and demonstrating an interest to the satisfaction of the officers;

that's the basic of every "loi 1901 association", otherwise anyone including opponents to Koha could join !

- Members will not have equal voting rights (physical persons get one vote, corporations get two votes,

(Note that we speak of a NPO here, so a vote is NOT to split any money). I don't see any problem here either. Frankly. Kohala is NOT a "company", it's a "loi 1901 association". It's quite hard to explain what it means, but nobody in france would be afraid or bothered by this decision !

council of administration members share all unnominated votes between them);

Le me explain with an example: Kohala has recieved EUR 10 000 from government, that want to support OpenSource development in libraries. some ppl think it would be worth for sponsoring dev of feature X, other think it would be better for sponsoring feature Y. So we vote. There are 5 kinds of vote : - ppl being here : they vote themself - ppl NOT being here, but voting by snailmail : they vote themself - ppl NOT being here, but saying to someone: "OK, You know my opinion, I give you a paper saying you can vote 'in my name'" - ppl NOT being here, but saying to the CA : "OK, I can't decide, but I'm confident you'll take the right decision". To avoid having only the president voting for all of them, the votes are splitted between all CA members. That's a very equitable way of doing things in fact !!! the president can't have the majority itself ! - ppl NOT being here, and saying nothing : they don't vote, it means they don't care. So their non-vote is not counted in the results. Once again, this is just theory in case something get in trouble, to avoid being stuck. In reality, decisions are usually easy to take, and recieve a 100% when we need to vote ! (which we must do anyway. And usually, it's just a "hand up if you agree". If *one* ppl request it => secret vote)

- Members will not contribute equitably to assets (some pay nothing, some pay double rate and all contributions are kept, even if KohaLa expels the member before end of their subscription);

"assets"... in french, this word is only used for profit organisation. For NPO, we speak of "membership". And the membership will be very low (something like 10€ annually). The membership will only cover timestamp & printing ink probably ! (yes, we need some, as once a year we must do an official "General Assembly" and it must be announced to everybody by snail-mail (iirc). The goal of a french loi 1901 is to have benevolent members that want to support & lobby & do something for the object of the association. Most associations get ressources from government for their actions. So what is the goal of KohaLa: support & help Koha development. No more no less. The idea of a fork is totally ridiculous : who could do that in KohaLa, with which ressources ? No, really, it makes me laughing. Thinking of it, I even think the fork is impossible, due to the object of KohaLa : "help & support Koha". If KohaLa fork the project, then it's no more Koha, then the association can't continue it's goal, then it MUST be disolved[1] ! as simple as that ! [1] the association can be disolved by : - it's members - a gov decision, if someone proves that it does no more follow it's objectives.

- Therefore, assets will not be democratically and equitably controlled;

We don't have assets, we have members. fundamentally different in our culture !

Additionally:

- KohaLa need not offer any training to its elected representatives, which means anyone elected without knowing relevant French law will be in trouble.

anyone not knowing the french law seem to mis-understand what is a loi "1901 association".

This has a chilling effect on nominations - all of the current candidates seem to be French, which is not representative of Koha users or developers IMO, but who wants to put their head on a guillotine unsupported?;

- KohaLa is not directed to work with other projects or groups;

!!! KohaLa is directed to work for Koha. Nothing more, nothing less. Let me explain by an example again... A library from CNRS, encouraged by ENSMP want to build something for african schools, for example setting Koha to rebuted computers that the CNRS has. It need some time, and some money (to send the computers to Ivory coast for example) time we have, we have benevolents. money we don't have. So we are looking for some, and ask local gov. The 1st question we have is "OK, who are you ?" If we answer "we are a company (=profit)", the answer is "OK, so I can't give you any money, you're a profit organization, my money is only for NPO". If we answer "we are a group of ppl", the answer is "OK, so I can't be sure that you'll be doing what you plan, and I don't have any structure to be sure". So we MUST answer (at least in France) : "we are an association loi 1901" : then the potential funder (that can also be a profit organisation, not necessary a governement agency) will know that : - we are serious & organised - we have an accounting system & annual reports - our goal is NOT to earn money (forbidden by french law : if we have more money than needed at the end of a year we can : keep it for next year or give it to another association.It is considered as good management to have something like 2 years in bank for a large & old association. When the association is disolved, any remaining money *must* be given to another association -remember, we don't have assets !-)

- KohaLa does not concern itself with the wider community.

right & wrong : we spoke of this during devWeek, and it appears that it's too hard to build something worldwide directly. So we start building things locally.

Is it possible to remedy this? If so, how?

Knowing french associaitons is a good start ;-) Just to conclude : - there are more than ... 1 000 000 associations loi 1901 in france. for almost anything you can imagine, and probably things you even can't imagine. I'm sure there is an association to "convince english ppl that eating frog is good" ! - the idea to see KohaLa as a "user group" is correct, but I hope KohaLa will be more than that. For example, I hope that, one day, the association will have money from gov to sponsor some dev. That will NOT be done internally (by KohaLa), but given to someone (me, LibLime, MJ or anyone willing & selected by KohaLa). Of course, the first mandatory thing whe KohaLa will request, will be "this feature must be developped in the "core" version of Koha !" -- Paul POULAIN et Henri Damien LAURENT Consultants indépendants en logiciels libres et bibliothéconomie (http://www.koha-fr.org) Tel : 04 91 31 45 19

On Tuesday 02 October 2007 07:40, MJ Ray wrote:

MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:

...

On Thursday 4 October, from 13:30, come in numbers to the first General Assembly of the KohaLa Association. [...]

I've posted naive translations of the rules and proposed internal regulations of KohaLa to http://serene.ttllp.co.uk/~mjr/StatutsKohala.pdf http://serene.ttllp.co.uk/~mjr/RIkohala.pdf

I rather suspect that these documents are copied from some standard forms somewhere. If you google for some of those Articles you will find very similar clauses in the Rules of other French organisations. eg "Article 9 : Conseil d’administration" is similar (not identical) to http://eurolab-france.asso.fr/pages/eurolabfrance/statuts/art9.htm It is only some countries where the idea of estabishing Rules and Regulations is considered to be of major importance. The Americans are very keen on it. Years ago I joined a group working on XML for use in the Law, which was interesting. The Americans then decided that it needed to set up Rules, and nothing else was discussed on the list for months (by which time the membership had dwindled substantially). It then decided to be taken over by OASIS and to require massive subscriptions (which I and most others were unwilling to pay): I have not heard from it since. It is obviously a good idea for a group that is going to meet regularly to have some way of reaching decisions and to deal with eg cash for running expenses. Even a small village sports club will usually have some form of rules. But in the UK there is no legal requirement for the sort of formality set out in these documents, while I suspect that there is in France. r. -- Roger Horne roger@hrothgar.co.uk http://hrothgar.co.uk/YAWS/