Design Poll - name for a registered non-profit

What should we name a registered non-profit?


  • Total voters
    19

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
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EDIT: Poll added retroactively for some of the main options suggested below.

I'll make a Twitter poll or something as well, see if any one option gets more interest than others. Although comments from existing contributors will weigh far more heavily than plain votes.

I skipped over the options involving "Games/Gaming" as we're moving to become a more serious open source organization, which might end up involving non-gaming stuff one day - who knows? Mostly libraries that could be useful elsewhere as well, or maybe some infrastructure automation, etc. The TOSI option sort of grew out of the batch of gaming related suggestions anyway :)

(Fair disclaimer: poll is set to show who votes for what)


[original message follows]

This year thanks to GSOC (and @manu3d!) I'll end up paying personal taxes on donations and income (we had income! Isn't that weird!)

I don't mind covering that, but figure it is about time to get us a proper non-profit org so we can take in money from donations and stuff like GSOC in a tax exempt fashion starting next year.

Shouldn't be too much trouble to get through the paperwork (I've got access to some legal resources) and the fee is probably about the same or less than I'd end up paying in taxes. In future years if we're OK with funds we can fund the renewal out of our stash.

It could also potentially lead to some benefits like free Standard Slack (infinite archives woo!)

But all that pales in comparison to the true question: What do we actually want to call ourselves? :)

In the past it has come up that "MovingBlocks" isn't really a great fit for our organization nowadays. It was really @begla's thing and he holds one of the domains (movingblocks.net) where he hosted his personal blog. But the other domain extensions are taken and the name is likely encumbered, much like "Blockmania" was

Yet we can't really take as drastic a step as renaming our org on GitHub away from MovingBlocks. And there is historical value to it.

We at present hold all the Terasology domains and the name isn't encumbered since, well, we made it up to be unique. We have the Terasology org on GitHub and use the org.terasology package name everywhere. Yet "Terasology" alone might not quite cut it either, since "Copyright 2016 Terasology" on Destination Sol or a Gestalt library might look odd.

I suggest we simply pick a bit more expanded name with "Terasology" in it so we can continue using that as a short name all over the place. I haven't come up with any brilliant org names with Terasology in it, but am curious if anybody can think of one. If not we can just go with something relatively boring like "The Terasology Group" (TTG) or "The Terasology Foundation" (TGF TTF). We might want to check the acronyms and such just in case.

Then we could simply bulk-update all copyright statements to our new and shiny legal name (before or at engine v2.0.0 I imagine), but leave mostly everything alone. Terasology the GitHub org sort of becomes our primary - works as our short name. MovingBlocks becomes our library/framework organization holder, which also kinds works - moving blocks / moving pieces. Frameworks. Right?

Anyway, that's what I figure, but I'd like to get some community feedback on the topic, and maybe a clever name :)

For now this would just be to get a non-profit registered. I don't think we need to go nuts just yet formalizing a full foundation with fancy founding principles or anything. I've held my registered corp Nanoware for years as the single owner with nothing special added to the paperwork. But when the time comes for us to get more serious we can do that as a next step, then maybe start legally transferring stuff like domains to a shared legal entity rather than me as a person.
 
Last edited:

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
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Oh I totally messed up that one acronym, no idea how I got TGF out of "The Terasology Foundation" (TTF) :D

Looks like that would connect primarily to a font file extension. Pity, I kinda liked how Transforming Growth Factor got into biology instead!
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
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I'm not too worried about it, no. Just didn't want to risk there being some crazy awful and fairly well used definition on Urban Dictionary or something like that :)

Apparently there is a minor one about turn tables but that seems pretty innocuous. I've seen ASF the acronym used some myself. But yep not much of a concern!
 

Rulasmur

New Member
TGI - Terasology Gaming/Games Initiative
TF&GF - Terasology Fun & Games Foundation
TGF - Terasology Gaming/Games Foundation
TOSG - Terasology Open Source Gaming/Games
THG - Terasology House of Gaming/Games

Will try think up some more
 

SkySom

Supreme Director of Trains
Contributor
Hunter
My vote is on Terasology Open Source Initiative (TOSI)
 

Skaldarnar

Development Lead
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Art
World
SpecOps
I really like @manu3d suggestion:
"The Terasology Collective" -- TTC​
From the wikipedia:
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an economic benefit or saving, but can be that as well.

The term "collective" is sometimes used to describe a species as a whole—for example, the human collective.
Although the TOSI acronym sounds fun as well....
 

qwc

Docker Dude!
Contributor
"TOSI" always sounds like OSI for me. I think "Collective" is nice, but in the end I haven't found a favorite yet.
 

AvaLanCS

Member
Contributor
Ahh the OSI model, my favourite on tests (not)... I thought of TOSHIBA when I first heard tosi. I like the collective and foundation names both.
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
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Design
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Marker comment - the above comments were made before the poll was added.
 

Cervator

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Florian

Active Member
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Architecture
I would prefer "Moving Blocks Foundation" or just "Moving Blocks" as I think the worst part of Terasology is the name. I don't like the name Terasology as it is complex and not easy to remember and it sounds similar to words not everyone likes.


I know I am a bit late so sorry for that.
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
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I would prefer "Moving Blocks Foundation" or just "Moving Blocks" as I think the worst part of Terasology is the name. I don't like the name Terasology as it is complex and not easy to remember and it sounds similar to words not everyone likes.

I know I am a bit late so sorry for that.
Bit of a belated response from me as well here - would you like for us to try re-polling with Movingblocks in some flavor as an option, or will you be OK if we move forward with a Terasology entry? While the votes are favoring the Terasology Foundation I'll be the first to admit that such low quantity polls can be sort of arbitrary, especially without more of our longer term contributors (just have feedback from a few).

I haven't considered MovingBlocks since we don't control all the domains and so on, but I don't want to bulldoze ahead ignoring any feedback either, would much rather have consensus :)

My trip to NYC didn't end up with any paperwork progress due to unrelated issues, but I'll get back on it eventually. There is no rush as far as I'm concerned (taxes aren't too bad so far)
 

metouto

Active Member
Contributor
Art
Not that I have done much lately ....... but if it was me I would leave it as it stands now ..... I would also put my vote in for ... The Terasology Foundation (TFF or TF) with me leaning to the TFF side more than TF :coffee: ..... my 2 cents
 
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