[MPlayer-dev-eng] Setting up a Foundation

[Alex Beregszaszi]

Hi,

This idea has been proposed by several people already, like Attila
Kinali in the past, but had no real responses.

It would be really good setting up a legal entity for the MPlayer
project, also it could handle FFmpeg or just be a general open source
multimedia hacking foundation, which could cover all the projects, which
want to join.

This foundation in first place, would get the donations we got and the
domain name rights transferred. Also the new server should be owned by
it. These are the short term ideas.

In long term, we could make a cafepress.com account, spreading MPlayer
"branded" coffee mugs, t-shirts and baseball hats, AFAIK it gives some
percents of the income to the project. And again, in long term, we could
set up bounties, like GNOME and several others have. Such bounties could
be made for reimplementing an open source codec from scratch (like
musepack in ffmpeg), or implementing a code from a standard (like ac3),
or making a specific job for mplayer (like a new gui).

Setting up a foundation in Hungary is extremely easy. Regarding the
monetary part, it only needs 800EUR to be placed on the bank account at
start. Usually the foundation costs like 40-80 EUR per year when doing
nothing (this includes bank account costs and accounting). But I dont
propose a Hungarian one, as I am the only one being here, the best would
be a German e.V., as we have the most developers living in that country.

Ideas are welcome, especially knowledge about making an e.V. (btw, is it
possible for a foreigner to join an e.V or take a place in it?) and
volunteers for handling this case :)

-- 
Alex Beregszaszi 			email: alex at fsn.hu
Free Software Network			cell: +36 70 3144424