TWikiAlliance

Imagine a company wants to join TWiki and participate in some way. How can it do so?

Note, this is an ongoing discussion in the TWikiCommunity.

Summary

The TWikiAlliance is a non-profit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of TWiki. Anybody - i.e. for-profit entities - is invited to become a member of the TWikiAlliance and contribute to it. It's main purpose should be to promote, protect and standardize TWiki by providing unified resources and services needed for this open source product to successfully compete with comparative platforms. The TWikiAlliance itself does not build TWiki, nor does it compete with existing for-profit TWiki companies. It provides a neutral forum for other organizations to collaborate and promote TWiki, comparable to individuals that are able to collaborate right away as things are today, but on an organizational level. The more companies become member of a TWikiAlliance, the more its neutrality is assured. In any case, no matter who and how many companies join the TWikiAlliance, the TWikiAlliance must serve as a neutral advocate to advance the interests of TWiki on the whole. It should also be the instance to foster collaboration events among TWiki developers, application developers, industry and end users to solve pressing issues facing the TWiki ecosystem in various areas.

-- Contributors: MichaelDaum - 08 Jul 2008

Discussion

How does a company sign up?

-- DavidWolfe - 08 Jul 2008

This is the idea, that I am in favor of. I would like to see you, Michael, evolve and operationalize it here with information on how to organize decisions and funding. For funding I already had some ideas.

-- MartinSeibert - 09 Jul 2008

The concept for a fund-raising association is documented now. Please help with your comment: TWikiFundRaising

-- MartinSeibert - 31 Aug 2008

David, a company would sign up by becoming a sort of Funding Member. We haven't worked out different types membership yet, nor staged fees. The model I favor so far is that of KDE e.V. Have a look at their Rules of Procedures for Supporting Members. Another good example can be found in the Bylaws of the Linux Foundation. However, Linux Foundation is a bit different from KDE e.V. and probably doesn't fit that well on a project like TWiki. This foundation has got company members only (i.e. no natural persons as far as I can see), being of Silver, Gold and Platinum level. Membership fees vary based on the membership level and the number of employees in a company.

-- MichaelDaum - 01 Sep 2008