[Xapian-discuss] Joining the Software Freedom Conservancy

[Olly Betts]

To quote their website (https://sfconservancy.org/):

| Software Freedom Conservancy is a not-for-profit organization that
| helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source
| Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and
| infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus
| on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general
| public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not
| relate directly to software development and documentation.

It would be particularly useful for the project to be able to hold its
own funds - we get money from Google for mentoring GSoC students, and
also to reimburse travel to the mentor summit, and we have had offers of
donations in the past despite not asking for them.

SFC would also be able to provide useful support in other ways - e.g.
for holding a Xapian conference, or if we get to where we're able to
relicense Xapian.

They encourage projects to apply even if they aren't 100% definite on
joining, so I put in an application to see if they'd be interested, and
they've reviewed the application and seem very enthusiastic.

The next step is to decide if we actually want to join.  You can
obviously infer that I think it's a sensible move, but it isn't
something I want to force through.

Cheers,
    Olly