[Consortium] linuxaudio.org

[Daniel James]

> I'd like to have  a clearer understanding of  what the legal
> situation of the Consortium   is (or is planned to   be).

At the moment it has no legal status, in any country. This is what I 
was planning:

1. Register post office box (here in the UK) as the contact address of 
the linuxaudio.org consortium (I've sent off the forms, I'm just 
waiting for the Royal Mail to do their bit). It would be great to 
have an office for the project and staff, but realistically the 
resources aren't in place yet.

2. Contact all the member projects to make sure they have named a 
representative for the Management Board, subscribe these people to 
the Management mailing list, and announce the formation of the Board.

From there on my management role will end, as democratically speaking 
I wouldn't be able to supervise myself. It's then up to the 
Management Board to decide if they want to form a legal organisation, 
replace me with someone who could do a better job etc etc.

On the subject of subdomains, I think it's a good idea, but I am keen 
to avoid duplication of effort. 

One possibility (that could prove important if sourceforge.net is no 
longer a good option) is that URLs of the form project.linuxaudio.org 
could be used for actual hosting, rather than as aliases. I 
understand there is a fully GPL fork of the Sourceforge code 
available which is still being maintained - 
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/savannah

Let's hope it isn't required, but given the critical importance of 
sourceforge.net to Linux audio projects, I believe it's vital that we 
have some kind of Plan B.

As for the domain name, I did register it myself and it currently has 
my home address on the WHOIS records. As soon as I know what the post 
office box number is, I will change the records. There has to be a 
named contact for billing and technical though, so if no-one objects 
I'll leave myself as the contact for billing for now. I don't want 
the domain to expire in a couple of years time because no-on else 
remembered to renew it! 

Cheers

Daniel