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.
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" (
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.
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