XSF EU Legal Structure - Help us define evaluation criteria
Dear XSF members, This email is the next step in the ongoing work on a potential EU legal structure for the XSF. To recap where we are: in December, the Board asked for volunteers to investigate lightweight options for an EU presence [1]. In February, example proposals were shared on the wiki and opened for community feedback [2]. Many members participated in that discussion (thanks!) and five proposals are now documented: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/XSF_EU_Legal_Transition_Proposal - The proposals cover a range of approaches, from full EU reconstitution to structural simplification, to more lightweight options. At today's Board meeting, we concluded that the proposals give us a good foundation, but that we are not yet in a position to rank or narrow them reliably. What is missing is a shared evaluation framework: without agreeing on what matters most, any comparison risks being arbitrary. The Board's proposed next step is therefore to define a set of evaluation criteria first, and then use those as a yardstick to assess the proposals. We would like your input on that list of criteria before the Board finalises it at the next meeting on 21 May. Below is an initial draft. We are not asking you to evaluate the proposals yet, only to help us refine this list: - Governance & Member Control - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. - Legal & Regulatory Complexity - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. - IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. - Transition Cost & Operational Overhead - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. - International Orientation & Reach - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. - Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. - Financial Flexibility & Funding Options - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. - Flexibility for Future Changes - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. - Risk & Liability Management - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. - Alignment with Strategic Goals - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction. Specifically, we would welcome your thoughts on: 1. Are there important criteria missing from this list? 2. Are any of the listed criteria redundant or not relevant to our situation? 3. Which criteria do you consider most important? The Board will use the feedback from this thread at the next meeting (21 May) to agree on a final, ordered list of criteria. We will then use that list to structure a more focused evaluation of the proposals. Please reply to this thread by 19 May if possible, to give the Board time to review input before the meeting. Thanks in advance for your time and thoughts. Kind regards, Guus [1] https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/thread/UBVF332GN63S... [2] https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/thread/5OS3L2D4EH6P...
The list looks good enough to me. On 5/7/26 12:55 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Below is an initial draft. We are not asking you to evaluate the proposals yet, only to help us refine this list:
* Governance & Member Control - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. * Legal & Regulatory Complexity - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. * IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. * Transition Cost & Operational Overhead - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. * International Orientation & Reach - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. * Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. * Financial Flexibility & Funding Options - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. * Flexibility for Future Changes - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. * Risk & Liability Management - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. * Alignment with Strategic Goals - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction.
Hi all, As it has now been a couple of weeks without additional feedback, I would like to move towards a more concrete and structured evaluation framework based on the criteria that I shared earlier. I believe it is useful to distinguish between three categories of criteria: - *Foundational / non-negotiable criteria*: areas where significant weaknesses could effectively disqualify a proposal. - *Operational criteria*: important practical considerations that affect how well the structure functions in practice. - *Optimization criteria*: desirable qualities that are valuable, but probably not decisive on their own. My tentative prioritization would place risk/liability, sustainability, governance, and legal operability in the top tier, since weaknesses there could outweigh advantages elsewhere. International reach and financial considerations would come next, while transition cost, operational flexibility, and broader strategic alignment seem important, but secondary to getting the fundamentals right. Concretely, I would currently group the criteria as follows: *Foundational* - *Risk & Liability Management* - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. - *Governance & Member Control* - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. - *Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability* - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. - *Legal & Regulatory Complexity* - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. *Operational* - *International Orientation & Reach* - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. - *Financial Flexibility & Funding Options* - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. *Optimization* - *Transition Cost & Operational Overhead* - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. - *Alignment with Strategic Goals* - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction. - *Flexibility for Future Changes* - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. - *IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility* - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. I have two concrete requests: 1. For all members: please challenge or validate both the criteria themselves and the proposed prioritization. 2. For people who submitted proposals: please update your proposal to explain how the proposed legal structure performs against each of these criteria. My expectation is that the Board will eventually use both the agreed criteria and the proposal evaluations against them to compare proposals in a more structured way and, ultimately, select a preferred direction. Kind regards, Guus On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 12:36 AM Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
The list looks good enough to me.
On 5/7/26 12:55 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Below is an initial draft. We are not asking you to evaluate the proposals yet, only to help us refine this list:
* Governance & Member Control - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. * Legal & Regulatory Complexity - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. * IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. * Transition Cost & Operational Overhead - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. * International Orientation & Reach - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. * Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. * Financial Flexibility & Funding Options - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. * Flexibility for Future Changes - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. * Risk & Liability Management - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. * Alignment with Strategic Goals - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction.
On 5/21/26 11:10 AM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
* /Risk & Liability Management/ - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself.
To me, this feels more operational than foundational. Although risk management is not an insignificant consideration, over the last 25 years the XSF has not experienced serious legal, financial, and operational risks as far as I know, nor have officers, board members, regular members, contributors, or the organization been subject to claims of liability. Naturally, the landscape might be changing. Alternatively, we might see Risk & Liability management as foundational but not a major threat in the broader analysis... Peter
Hey Guus, Thanks for cycling this! Besides I believe these are good criterias to start with, I got just reminded I wanted to add one suggestion and that is to consider to choose a setup that is simple or at least choose the paths we can go in that direction. I don't want to say it is simple, because it is not, but state to keep that in mind. On the otherside looking at our resources we should not make this an overkill. So what first XSF practices could show that things work for us (or not)? Cheers, Eddie May 21, 2026 7:11:41 PM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com>:
Hi all,
As it has now been a couple of weeks without additional feedback, I would like to move towards a more concrete and structured evaluation framework based on the criteria that I shared earlier.
I believe it is useful to distinguish between three categories of criteria:
- *Foundational / non-negotiable criteria*: areas where significant weaknesses could effectively disqualify a proposal. - *Operational criteria*: important practical considerations that affect how well the structure functions in practice. - *Optimization criteria*: desirable qualities that are valuable, but probably not decisive on their own.
My tentative prioritization would place risk/liability, sustainability, governance, and legal operability in the top tier, since weaknesses there could outweigh advantages elsewhere.
International reach and financial considerations would come next, while transition cost, operational flexibility, and broader strategic alignment seem important, but secondary to getting the fundamentals right.
Concretely, I would currently group the criteria as follows:
*Foundational*
- *Risk & Liability Management* - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. - *Governance & Member Control* - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. - *Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability* - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. - *Legal & Regulatory Complexity* - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations.
*Operational*
- *International Orientation & Reach* - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. - *Financial Flexibility & Funding Options* - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms.
*Optimization*
- *Transition Cost & Operational Overhead* - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. - *Alignment with Strategic Goals* - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction. - *Flexibility for Future Changes* - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. - *IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility* - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure.
I have two concrete requests:
1. For all members: please challenge or validate both the criteria themselves and the proposed prioritization. 2. For people who submitted proposals: please update your proposal to explain how the proposed legal structure performs against each of these criteria.
My expectation is that the Board will eventually use both the agreed criteria and the proposal evaluations against them to compare proposals in a more structured way and, ultimately, select a preferred direction.
Kind regards,
Guus
On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 12:36 AM Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
The list looks good enough to me.
On 5/7/26 12:55 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Below is an initial draft. We are not asking you to evaluate the proposals yet, only to help us refine this list:
* Governance & Member Control - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. * Legal & Regulatory Complexity - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. * IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. * Transition Cost & Operational Overhead - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. * International Orientation & Reach - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. * Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. * Financial Flexibility & Funding Options - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. * Flexibility for Future Changes - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. * Risk & Liability Management - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. * Alignment with Strategic Goals - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction.
Hi Eddie, Thanks for the reply, and for raising this. Your point made me think about whether simplicity is already captured in the criteria, or whether it represents something distinct. When I drafted "Transition Cost & Operational Overhead", I had cost and administrative burden in mind. Your message pointed at something subtly different: the risk that a structurally complex setup could be fragile, even if it isn't particularly expensive (in money or resources) to run. That said, I don't think we need a new criterion for this. Given that our proposals range from full EU reconstitution to lightweight options, simpler proposals will naturally score well on Operational Overhead and the more complex ones won't. I suggest that we take your message as a useful prompt: when we get to the evaluation phase, assessors should keep structural simplicity and resilience in mind when applying that criterion, not just time and cost. Does that work for you? Kind regards, Guus On Wed, Jun 3, 2026 at 1:50 PM E.M. via Members <members@xmpp.org> wrote:
Hey Guus,
Thanks for cycling this!
Besides I believe these are good criterias to start with, I got just reminded I wanted to add one suggestion and that is to consider to choose a setup that is simple or at least choose the paths we can go in that direction. I don't want to say it is simple, because it is not, but state to keep that in mind. On the otherside looking at our resources we should not make this an overkill.
So what first XSF practices could show that things work for us (or not)?
Cheers, Eddie
May 21, 2026 7:11:41 PM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com>:
Hi all,
As it has now been a couple of weeks without additional feedback, I would like to move towards a more concrete and structured evaluation framework based on the criteria that I shared earlier.
I believe it is useful to distinguish between three categories of criteria:
- *Foundational / non-negotiable criteria*: areas where significant weaknesses could effectively disqualify a proposal. - *Operational criteria*: important practical considerations that affect how well the structure functions in practice. - *Optimization criteria*: desirable qualities that are valuable, but probably not decisive on their own.
My tentative prioritization would place risk/liability, sustainability, governance, and legal operability in the top tier, since weaknesses there could outweigh advantages elsewhere.
International reach and financial considerations would come next, while transition cost, operational flexibility, and broader strategic alignment seem important, but secondary to getting the fundamentals right.
Concretely, I would currently group the criteria as follows:
*Foundational*
- *Risk & Liability Management* - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. - *Governance & Member Control* - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. - *Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability* - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. - *Legal & Regulatory Complexity* - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations.
*Operational*
- *International Orientation & Reach* - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. - *Financial Flexibility & Funding Options* - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms.
*Optimization*
- *Transition Cost & Operational Overhead* - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. - *Alignment with Strategic Goals* - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction. - *Flexibility for Future Changes* - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. - *IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility* - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure.
I have two concrete requests:
1. For all members: please challenge or validate both the criteria themselves and the proposed prioritization. 2. For people who submitted proposals: please update your proposal to explain how the proposed legal structure performs against each of these criteria.
My expectation is that the Board will eventually use both the agreed criteria and the proposal evaluations against them to compare proposals in a more structured way and, ultimately, select a preferred direction.
Kind regards,
Guus
On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 12:36 AM Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
The list looks good enough to me.
On 5/7/26 12:55 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Below is an initial draft. We are not asking you to evaluate the proposals yet, only to help us refine this list:
* Governance & Member Control - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. * Legal & Regulatory Complexity - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. * IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. * Transition Cost & Operational Overhead - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. * International Orientation & Reach - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. * Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. * Financial Flexibility & Funding Options - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. * Flexibility for Future Changes - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. * Risk & Liability Management - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. * Alignment with Strategic Goals - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction.
Hey Guus, Yes, I think that's alright! One more addition here: The exploration process of such a new organisation itself should be more on the "easy side" too. That's why I proposed to think this along our "daily" actions. More like a natural way of inspecting if a potential organisational candidate supports how we act. Thanks for raising this topic again. Eddie Jun 4, 2026 3:29:42 PM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com>:
Hi Eddie,
Thanks for the reply, and for raising this. Your point made me think about whether simplicity is already captured in the criteria, or whether it represents something distinct.
When I drafted "Transition Cost & Operational Overhead", I had cost and administrative burden in mind. Your message pointed at something subtly different: the risk that a structurally complex setup could be fragile, even if it isn't particularly expensive (in money or resources) to run.
That said, I don't think we need a new criterion for this. Given that our proposals range from full EU reconstitution to lightweight options, simpler proposals will naturally score well on Operational Overhead and the more complex ones won't. I suggest that we take your message as a useful prompt: when we get to the evaluation phase, assessors should keep structural simplicity and resilience in mind when applying that criterion, not just time and cost. Does that work for you?
Kind regards,
Guus
On Wed, Jun 3, 2026 at 1:50 PM E.M. via Members <members@xmpp.org> wrote:
Hey Guus,
Thanks for cycling this!
Besides I believe these are good criterias to start with, I got just reminded I wanted to add one suggestion and that is to consider to choose a setup that is simple or at least choose the paths we can go in that direction. I don't want to say it is simple, because it is not, but state to keep that in mind. On the otherside looking at our resources we should not make this an overkill.
So what first XSF practices could show that things work for us (or not)?
Cheers, Eddie
May 21, 2026 7:11:41 PM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com>:
Hi all,
As it has now been a couple of weeks without additional feedback, I would like to move towards a more concrete and structured evaluation framework based on the criteria that I shared earlier.
I believe it is useful to distinguish between three categories of criteria:
- *Foundational / non-negotiable criteria*: areas where significant weaknesses could effectively disqualify a proposal. - *Operational criteria*: important practical considerations that affect how well the structure functions in practice. - *Optimization criteria*: desirable qualities that are valuable, but probably not decisive on their own.
My tentative prioritization would place risk/liability, sustainability, governance, and legal operability in the top tier, since weaknesses there could outweigh advantages elsewhere.
International reach and financial considerations would come next, while transition cost, operational flexibility, and broader strategic alignment seem important, but secondary to getting the fundamentals right.
Concretely, I would currently group the criteria as follows:
*Foundational*
- *Risk & Liability Management* - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. - *Governance & Member Control* - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. - *Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability* - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. - *Legal & Regulatory Complexity* - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations.
*Operational*
- *International Orientation & Reach* - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. - *Financial Flexibility & Funding Options* - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms.
*Optimization*
- *Transition Cost & Operational Overhead* - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. - *Alignment with Strategic Goals* - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction. - *Flexibility for Future Changes* - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. - *IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility* - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure.
I have two concrete requests:
1. For all members: please challenge or validate both the criteria themselves and the proposed prioritization. 2. For people who submitted proposals: please update your proposal to explain how the proposed legal structure performs against each of these criteria.
My expectation is that the Board will eventually use both the agreed criteria and the proposal evaluations against them to compare proposals in a more structured way and, ultimately, select a preferred direction.
Kind regards,
Guus
On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 12:36 AM Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
The list looks good enough to me.
On 5/7/26 12:55 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Below is an initial draft. We are not asking you to evaluate the proposals yet, only to help us refine this list:
* Governance & Member Control - evaluates how decisions are made within the organization, including the roles of members and the board and how voting rights are allocated. * Legal & Regulatory Complexity - considers the requirements and processes for forming and maintaining the entity under the laws of the chosen jurisdiction, including compliance, reporting, and language obligations. * IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure. * Transition Cost & Operational Overhead - assesses estimated setup costs, ongoing administrative responsibilities, and any additional operational effort required to implement the structure. * International Orientation & Reach - considers how well the structure accommodates contributors, members, and operations across multiple countries. * Continuity & Long-Term Sustainability - evaluates whether the structure can support ongoing operations smoothly during and after any transition, including maintaining organizational stability. * Financial Flexibility & Funding Options - examines whether the structure allows XSF to manage finances effectively, including holding funds, receiving donations, or engaging in grants or other funding mechanisms. * Flexibility for Future Changes - assesses whether the structure can adapt to changes in membership, governance, operations, or jurisdictional requirements without requiring a complete reorganization. * Risk & Liability Management - looks at how the structure addresses legal, financial, and operational risks, including liability exposure for board members, contributors, and the organization itself. * Alignment with Strategic Goals - evaluates how the proposed structure supports XSF's overall mission, objectives, and long-term strategic direction.
On Thu, 21 May 2026 at 18:11, Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
- *IP & Asset Transfer Feasibility* - looks at how easily intellectual property, trademarks, and other assets can be transferred to or managed within the proposed structure
Very specifically on these, I think it would be useful to classify the IPR and related assets that the existing XSF has. My non-exhaustive guesswork gives me: * Copyright ownership of the XEPs * Copyright ownership of the website and other assets * Trademark licences (I think the XSF has a trademark licence for Jabber, though I can't find it) * Trademark sublicensor: https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/ Of these, I think Copyright can be transferred in the XEPs in the same way it's been transferred into the XSF; that is by the New XSF promising to make the specifications available to developers etc. That would form a consideration in a contract, and I believe that's sufficient to easily reassign the copyright. The copyright on the website is both harder and also less important; we might choose to licence rather than reassign. The current website seems to have no copyright imprimatur on it, and the repository has no licence. Might be worth doing something about both...? It's harder because there's no obvious consideration to use here - we couldn't have the New XSF promise to publish the website (that would be weird). It's less important because a licence will work just as well for our purposes, and licences are legally simpler. The trademark issues I don't know anything about; it's not an area of law I've ever had to tangle with. I wonder if the simplest solution would be to keep the Old XSF as a stub organisation holding just the trademark bits until we figure that out? Dave.
On 6/4/26 7:50 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
The trademark issues I don't know anything about; it's not an area of law I've ever had to tangle with. I wonder if the simplest solution would be to keep the Old XSF as a stub organisation holding just the trademark bits until we figure that out?
We had a discussion about this matter three months ago. Here are the messages I sent: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/message/AOSPQYJACOY... https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/message/XR4MEQMIYKQ... https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/message/MIOABW77NCE... My recommendation is to let the sublicensing program lapse. If in the future any open-source developers would like to use the JABBER license, they can contact Cisco directly. Peter
On 04/06/2026 15.50, Dave Cridland wrote:
[..]
Very specifically on these, I think it would be useful to classify the IPR and related assets that the existing XSF has. My non-exhaustive guesswork gives me:
[..] * Trademark licences (I think the XSF has a trademark licence for Jabber, though I can't find it)
This document can be found here <https://xmpp.org/docs/Trademark_License_Agreement.pdf>, as linked from <https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/background/>. Note that this document specifically disallows sublicensing, but read on below.
* Trademark sublicensor: https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/
Even though the JabberⓇ Trademark License Agreement clearly asserts that there is an agreement between the XSF and Cisco to offer a sublicensing program, we do not currently have any public document that explicitly shows this. I've been working with Peter to assess the relevant documents and whether we can make them publicly available. If so, we will make sure to add them to this section of the XSF website. I will provide an update when I have more to share. Cheers, Ralph
participants (5)
-
Dave Cridland -
E.M. -
Guus der Kinderen -
Peter Saint-Andre -
Ralph Meijer