TL;DR: Coreboot applied to the Conservancy and has been offered membership. The FSA template should be reviewed by all interested parties, and we need your help to draft three specific sections, which are discussed in detail at the bottom of this email. Full Details: I am excited to inform you that Conservancy's Project Evaluation Committee has approved Coreboot for membership in the Software Freedom Conservancy. I apologize greatly for the long delay between your application date and the date on which we offered you membership. Conservancy does not offer membership until we're sure we can offer services to the project. The next step is to negotiate a formal agreement between the project and the Conservancy, which is called a fiscal sponsorship agreement (FSA). You can find a template of the agreement available on Conservancy's website at: http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/ConservancyFSATemplate.pdf http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/conservancy-fsa-template.tex Generally, Conservancy leaves it for the Coreboot community to decide how you'd like to discuss the document internally. Note that signing such an agreement is a big step for the project and you should consider the agreement carefully, in whatever forum is most appropriate for your community. Conservancy strongly suggests that a public discussion of the FSA occur on the general discussion list for developers of your project, which is why I've posted this information here on your public list. Also cc'ed is Conservancy's "Project Intake group", which can be reached by the alias <project-intake@sfconservancy.org> and is comprised of the following people: Bradley M. Kuhn, Tony Sebro, Jeremy Allison, Tom Callaway, Martin Michlmayr All of us are members of Conservancy's Project Evaluation Committee and will be happy to answer questions and you should also feel free to cc that address, too, if you'd like, when asking questions. Meanwhile, Conservancy's detailed discussion will be with the application leads: Marc Jones, Ron Minnich, and Stefan Reinauer. Ultimately, Conservancy will rely on the application leads to coordinate the final details of the FSA with Conservancy. Specifically, note that the FSA template is in fact, just that, a template. Most notably, we'll need to figure out together two key terms of the agreement: (a) who the initial signatories should be (ideally it should include anyone who has ever made substantial contributions to the project), (b) who the Project Leadership Committee (PLC) should be, how it should govern itself, and what it should be called. Note there are a few examples in the FSA template of how other projects have done this, but they are just guidelines, not choices. The most important thing is to write something that describes the natural and existing leadership structure of your project. Conservancy also is reluctant to accept PLC's that have fewer than three members. There are a few other minor issues that we've raised in a private thread with the application leads. Please note that this offer will expire six months after it is made. We would be happy to extend that time constraint if we're in active discussions with you about joining. We look forward to Coreboot joining the Conservancy! -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy