[AnxFoundation] organisation will incorporate as "Annodex Association, Inc"

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

Dear all,

in the last Annodex committee meeting (see minutes
http://annodex.org/wiki/Committee/Meetings/2006_09_04/), we have taken
a large step forward and decided to solve the incorporation issue by
incorporating as a NSW association under the name "Annodex
Association, Inc".

If you have followed the last months of discussion, you will have
noticed that we have explored several alternative means of
incorporating and had to discard them:

* incorporation as a Australian Company Ltd by Guarantee:
  This would allow us to keep the name "Foundation", but it would
required us to provide extensive funds for incorporation and audits.
This is not realistic for this organisation.

* join Xiph.org, but continue to run as a separate project:
  The organisation would like to pick up CSIRO's trademark for Annodex
to allow it to do conformance certification, but the trademark is
currently Australian, so an Australian organisation would be
preferrable. Also, the goals of Xiph and Annodex differ, so it is
better to stay separate for the time being.

* create a "Linux Australia" subcommittee under the name "Annodex Foundation":
  We would probably not be able to be a legal entity in this way, so
all our legal work (e.g. Trademark attribution) would need to be done
by LA. Another disadvantage is that this would repel all non-Linux
people, which goes against our intentions.


We will now go forward with changes to the constitution and actual
incorporation within the next few weeks. Once we are incorporated, it
will be possible for CSIRO to pursue the attribution of the Annodex
Trademark to the Association which will allow us to defend the formats
and to provide conformance certification.

If there are any objections to this course of action, this is the time
to speak up.

Allow me also to express a big thank you to the committee for its hard
work over the last year to determine the best course of action and
come to this conclusion. The committee would have liked to be more
active in other areas, but this was the dominant issue and we are
close to its resolution. So: "thank you".

Regards,
Silvia.
---
Secretary of the Annodex Association (tbi)