Toolserver:Toolserver Working Group

A Toolserver Working Group was established in July 2010 with the mandate to draft by-laws for a Toolserver Association which would legally own and manage the Wikimedia Toolserver.

A confidential workspace is also available on the Internal WM-DE wiki

Process
The following four step process has been adopted:


 * 1) set up working groups / get organized - by 8th August
 * 2) work on groups, come up with a draft of the by-laws - by end August
 * 3) ask lawyers to work on it - during September
 * 4) discuss and revise - by end October

Mandate
The mandate was set out in an email from Wikimedia Deutschland to the chapters mailing list on 12th May, which read:

''During the Wikimedia Conference 2010 in Berlin, we discussed a new approach towards Toolserver governance. In a nutshell, Wikimedia Germany would like to explore together with other chapters the possibilities of running the Toolserver as a joined operation, both from a strategic and a financial point of view.

''It was agreed that the best way forward would be to form a working group that includes every chapter that is interested in discussing the future of the Toolserver governance and that is willing to financially contribute towards the operation of the Toolserver. The mandate of this working group is to come up with a possible organizational and legal structure for a new Toolserver association and with some basic roles & responsibilities of such an association. Last but not least the working group would outline a first draft of the future budget of the new Toolserver association. Documentation of this discussion during the conference can be found on meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_meeting_2010/Documentation/Working_Groups/Toolserver

''It would be great if all chapters would discuss whether or not they would like to be part of this working group at this time. We agreed during the conference that to join the working group, each chapter would have to make the following contributions to join the working group:


 * 1) '' We allocated an initial budget of 5.000,00 € for the working group (travel costs, legal and tax advice, and so on). Each chapter that is part of the working group will contribute towards this budget equally; if for example 10 chapters join the group, each chapter has to pay 500,00 €, if only 5 chapters join, each chapter needs to contribute 1.000,00 €
 * 2) '' Each participating chapter will also commit to spend at least 5.000,00 € over a period of 12 months on the new Toolserver association, to pay for ongoing Toolserver operations and investment. Details of this initial budget for the Toolserver association will have to come from the working group, of course.

''Each participating chapter nominates *one* person who will represent the chapter in the working group and who can speak officially for the chapter. Because we have a lot of different topics to discuss, I see no problem with more people from participating chapters joining the working group as experts.

Membership
Eight chapters have joined the Toolserver Working Group:


 * WM DE: Pavel Richter, Daniel Kinzler
 * WM FR: Christophe Henner, Julien Fayolle
 * WM IT: Luca Parisi - User:Lp
 * WM NO: Lars Åge Kamfjord
 * WM PL: Marek Stelmasik - User:masti
 * WM RU: Vladimir Medeyko, Victor Vasiliev
 * WM CH: Frederic Schutz
 * WM UK: Andrew Turvey

Also taking part in the working group is Toolserver user River.

Bylaws

 * /Jurisdiction
 * /Purpose
 * /Membership
 * /Voting rights
 * /Board
 * /Proposal from Thomas Dalton