October 2024 - Inkscape Board of Directors

Meeting Notes: A new chapter for Inkscape
by Martin Owens 27 Oct '24

27 Oct '24

Meeting: A new chapter for Inkscape, a project-internal discussion Date: October 26th 2024 Attending: Pono, Adam Belis, Martin Owens, Jonathan, Ishann, Elendil, Itlnx, Marc Jeanmougin, Michele, PBS, Rene Secretary: Martin Presiding: Jonathan This will be a brief presentation of the work in progress, this discussion started with Rene, Martin and Jonathan and this isn't meant to be a decision but an opening of the discussion about. # Presentation Jonathan presents a slide-show. An introduction to what a fiscal host is. It's a type of abstraction layer which surrounds legal and money issues. You probably aren't in contact with the fiscal host as a normal contributor, unless you are on the board (project leadership committee). They are responsible for taking in donations, and paying out the infrastructure and other costs of the projects, taxes and other compliance. The next thing is legal matters, such as trademarks, copyrights and any conflicts that might arise in law. A fiscal host can also be involved in hiring, contracting, and being a HR in some cases. Most jurisdictions require the project to maintain a democratic structure. Inkscape is currently hosted by the SFC, a 501.c3, they do not have to pay certain taxes but in order to get this there are very strict rules and that the organization is run in the public interest and can not be involved in the regular commercial market. How this works is that the FSA / Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement is a signed contract between the project leadership committee and the SFC as the fiscal host. This involves a 10% cut of our donations (pono: this is much lower than industry average) in exchange for the services provided to the project. https://inkscape.org/*leadership-committee/charter/ Why would be look beyond the SFC? The SFC has repeatedly failed to deliver on promises and duties, which have been poorly defined sometimes. Issues range from programs like the hardware program failing; not updating accounts in a timely manner and becoming unresponsive to important and time sensitive work. Other issues are structural which are specific to being a US based non- profile despite Inkscape being a mostly European project now. This causes problems with donations as well as being inaccessible to certain countries. Restrictions to what payment methods we can achieve. (pono: apologize for the failures to deliver, and relates the on going work to improve the payment infrastructure including Patreon) Comparison to Other projects. A fairly large project which used to be an SFC member but which created their own organization. There is a feeling that Inkscape might have simply outgrown the infrastructure of the SFC. (pono: git and openwrt are comparable size to Inkscape) We have certain role models to look to for comparable projects: * Dutch non-profit: Krita, Blender, Godot * German foundation: The Document Foundation * German non-profit: KDE, Drupal, Codeberg * French association: VLC There are various jurisdictional considerations when following these examples depending on what we want. Risks of moving: There are certain considerations when it comes to moving. Transferring of funds needs to be agreed upon and it has to be done in accordance with the law. Possibly taxes on income depending on the jurisdiction we set up an organization in. Administration overhead: we have to everything ourselves or pay for it for example a tax consultant. Most likely we would end up contracting more. The board (of the association) becomes personally liable for any law breaking as there would be no legal office checking on decisions. What the project needs: The project dictates what it needs from the organization, not the other way round. An organization which is transparent and would be friendly to open source. Build a new organization with a bootstrapping team, transferring resources etc. # Discussion Pono adds context: It required a year of full time staff in Godot. The transfer required specific legal and other work. He thinks Inkscape should stay with the SFC. It would be less optimal to setup a separate organization, but the SFC would support the project moving if the project as a whole voted for it. Michele, thanks Jonathan for presenting the topic. She asks pono if a part of the discussion should be about making a list of things that the SFC would have to do in order for Inkscape to stay with the SFC. Martin adds his own perspective on working with the SFC to push it forwards and how frustrating it is to have a list of things the project needs and not having them dealt with for years and years and restarting the process would be ignoring the considerable effort already made. Pono would like to have a long term planning meeting, even if we end up leaving the SFC, a long term planning meeting would benifit the project so everyone knows what's going on. What the project wants for itself. Marc wanted to bring up the situation in the EU about setting up an organization as well. Adam Belis, worries about paying tax in the EU and then paying again the SFC which is a kind of tax so doesn't know if this is a good idea. Marc would see the ability to depend on the SFCs advice as being valuable. Jonathan adds that having a separate organization would cause a problem with moving money around and the SFC would end up having to control the EU organization. Martin adds his discussion with Godot about how their SFC pool was used to pay contractors, while at the same time their own organisation would building up it's reserves. It's possible to have two pools of money doing different things without having a complicated dependency. Adam asks about the details of each jurisdictions and Jonathan goes into some of the pros and cons of each type/class and country. Michele: Before spending on lawyers, we would need to better understand the project and goals for the next few years. In addition to understanding basic budget requirements for such an idea. The idea is not bad, we need to have much more information prior to making a decision. Itlnx: The unresponsiveness alone is a good reason to move. Martin adds that if we're talking about project goals, we can measure success by how easily it is to invite users into participating either time and skills or financially and being able to get recognition for that contribution. If we don't have a robust financial infrastructure, we can not grow into the kind of project that involves users in the process of building Inkscape. Jonathan wraps up the project by thanking everyone and inviting those people present to have a think about what we might deal with. Most of the people in the meeting were sympathetic to the idea of making a new organization, but have questions about the risks involved. Rapid fire: - Adam likes the idea, would like to see more fleshed out options; thanks for the meeting - Martin thanks everyone for being involved in the discussion professionally. - Rene thought we were on an uptick with our relationship with the SFC during the last hackfest; but it seems to have slipped back to a feeling of frustration. There will be a lot of costs with doing this, we aren't driven away from the SFC by the costs, but by the ability to get things done. - Krlr17 as an observer, it might be nice to have an organization especially with the latest issues getting hardware. We don't want to loose volunteers in this process. - Marc thinks most of the difficulties with the SFC can be resolved, but having an EU organization still makes sense for many reasons. An agreement between an EU presence and the SFC would be his preference. - Michele asks if we can't grow within the SFC then it's good to have the discussion. What does the project look like. She would like to see a Project leadership team that was better able to make a stand and make decisions firmly. She warns everyone that having an uncoordinated effort for information might not be as useful as suggested by Jonathan. - Ishann asks that whatever we decide to do, we should remain a welcoming project. - Pono, having a long term plan for the project would be beneficial. He notes that a lot of the failures have fallen on him personally. An idea might be to hire a project administrator to take a lot of the tasks we might be having issues with. Finally; everyone (at the same time) said that pono is not really directly at failure and that there are structural issues which limit how much work the SFC can reasonably offer and Inkscape will continue to put demands on the SFC they might not be able to meet. Pono ends by saying that "We should all be so lucky to see our children grow up and go to college; a project like inkscape growing up is a part of life for this really important project" The meeting is wrapped up with a poll about what the next steps should be. Thanks for reading. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Vote: Apple Developer program
by René de Hesselle 27 Oct '24

27 Oct '24

Dear all, Background: ----------- Creating properly signed and notarized releases for macOS requires a paid membership in Apple's developer program. This membership comes in the form of a yearly subscription. So every year we get to decide anew if we see enough value in signing macOS releases to warrant the expense of 99 € that comes with it. It is possible to distribute and use unsigned apps on macOS just like on Windows. The downside is that a user has to take additional (but not overly complicated) steps to make this work while macOS itself discourages people from using unsigned apps. Proposal: --------- We've been creating signed macOS apps since 1.0 and I propose to continue this practice at the expense of 99 €. Additional information: ----------------------- Whatever the PLC decides in this case here is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT to my purchase decision. I am buying this either way. The question is only if I'm going to use it for Inkscape or not. Votes: ------ a. Agree to spend 99 € on the Apple Developer program ("I want signed macOS releases") b. Disapprove participation in the Apple Developer program ("I do not want signed macOS releases") c. Other: ________ Best regards, René

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Contributor T-Shirts for 1.4
by Martin Owens 20 Oct '24

20 Oct '24

Dear Inkscape Project Leadership, # Background I have ordered 24 t-shirts featuring the design for 1.4 on white cotton. The design is meeting with approval from people who have been asked and I would like funding to be able to send these to members and cover their production costs. See photo of me wearing t-shirt here: https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_vectors?msg=hLavFfkSrbdd95HF5 Sizes available: Unisex Medium=3, Large=7, XL=6, 2XL=4 Women Medium=1, Large=2, XL=1 I'll be making them available to contributors who are members of the project and who have been active during the 1.4 release (so over 2023 and 2024) in any area, not just code on a first come first served basis. Logistically, I have them here now and I will be sending them out one at a time to people's addresses directly from here in the USA. If it's cheaper, I may request a European plc member to take a batch of them but I'll document that if it happens. Each shirt will cost $12 plus I'm estimating $20 per delivery cost (though I expect that to be widely variable). The project only needs to buy the ones I send out to contributors. # Vote Budget $900 to cover the maximum possible costs of sending out these shirts, the amount to be less than this once they've all been sent out and delivery costs are known. a. Approve of t-shirt budget b. Disapprove c. Something else I abstain from the voteas the t-shirt vendor 😅️. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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