The First Step

[tank]

My first step was erecting this temporary Domain and site
Ideas and suggestions welcome in this thread

[Alibaba]

Looks quite well.

[tank]

Alibaba I have gone ahead and promoted you to administrator
also i removed the stupid require approval

[tank]

Zeilia suggested me to look at http://opensource.org/
I intend to do so but as many sets of eyes as possible is advisable

[Flow Snake]

Wow gr8 work

[joedf]

Seems interesting.

[kon]

Thanks tank,
I appreciate all the work this will / has taken to get off the ground. With the consensus of the community, you are the only one who made the first concrete steps. The value of those steps is immense.

[kon]

Creating a foundation is the only way AHK will be safe from the type of trouble we are currently experiencing in the old forum. Once donations begin being accepted I would be willing to make small donations on an ongoing basis for as long as I remain interested in AHK and am able.
Small, ongoing (ex. monthly) donations have several advantages over larger lump sum donations. So I would encourage others making donations to do it in this manner also. Firstly, spreading the donations out would allow the board and treasurer of the AHK foundation to budget on a long term basis. Also, it will ensure that large amounts of money are not in the AHK coffers at any given time. This will make it less tempting for a treasurer to embezzle, and will mitigate the damage if one does embezzle.
I’m not an expert on the matter, but instead of incorporating and then filing for non-profit status, we may just want to incorporate, or forgo incorporating all together. We would have to pay taxes on our donations, but we would avoid the legal requirements of a non-profit organization. Since we would not require a large amount of money to operate, this may be more cost effective. Again, I am not an expert, but here are some links I looked at:
http://www.legalzoom.com/non-profits/no ... rview.html
http://nonprofit.about.com/od/gettingst ... tartup.htm
http://nonprofit.about.com/od/nonprofit ... rating.htm

[budRich]

Great initiative tank!
Highest priority, should of course be to create the foundation. However, I guess it will take some time and paperwork before it's reality. And I think that in the meantime there should be a temporary board that can make important but necessary decisions that's needed to form the foundation. Example of such decisions are:

1. Name of the foundation
2. Members of the foundation
2. Name of the fork
3. Is the fork v2 or AHKv1.1
e.t.c.

[bitxor]

This looks promising, nice work Tank.

[flyingDman]

Good work Tank!
Eventually all will want to know how we can avoid what has happened i.e. that a single person can destroy or threaten to destroy the forum and years of expertise.
This is not only important in case of negligence or wrongdoing, but also when that person his hit by the proverbial bus... I.e there needs to be a succession plan and I think that needs to be public.

[tank]

That is exactly the reason behind a foundation with a board of members running it

[Drainx1]

Okay.
From what I understand, we would need to file as a company and have directors or a board (kinda a given in what we wanted.)

We would have to choose a state or country (if we want it to be based non-US) to file in.
From there we would want to file this (if US based) http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1023.pdf (tax exemption stuff)

Once we have the filing, we have to create bylaws for the organization and appoint have the board meet every so often to discuss the current affairs.

From what I have read, to file here in Kansas it takes $20, which I would be more than willing to give to file for the longevity of the new autohotkey.
Ref: http://www.kssos.org/forms/business_services/CN.pdf

Further, we would have to choose a name for the org.

Once all that is done, we can then apply to be an OSI Affiliate.

Also, I was looking at Freenodes policy on channels. When we register as an organization, we are allowed whole channel prefixes, #autohotkey-* which would be really nice. (and if we have the acronym of ahk, we can try to take control of the #ahk channel)

[AlphaBravo]

happy to see a lot of the prime suspects in the new forum.
tank, great job and thanks for the hard work, I don't care what they say about you, I think you're alright

[nnnik]

Hi do you plan to keep the de Community?

[Zelio]

quick search (curiosity: in France, we speak about association, law since 1901, always need papers, smal cost without yearbook/directory...)
http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Private-Foundation
Some steps are optional... problem always come when there are money, taxe and papers because of potential profit...
Do as you wish, but we need a name, AHK, AutoHotkey, AutoL or rebrand, will depends of vote and your taste (in my opinion Lexikos must have the last word about program name..., but he don't want to share his real opinion atm, for me it is a problem, he prefers V2 or not ?)

For example, if a foundation is too complicated or huge to maintain (can cost extra $ to be in info register book or other option), we just need one guy as Tank did who pay domain and server (a forum don't cost a lot, it is not a upload/download platform, database are small, small donation can be legaly gave to one private person without problem or registration to a state just with paypal), and share server and domain password with lexikos and fincs or other (trust as friend, just in case when they are problem if not admin or dev)...
The real problem is trust ! No law can protect internet steals ! Chris just have to continue to register the domain name, give server passwords to 3 people not all to one child without backup good sense, and ask for private donation, that cost to him only one hour per year... I am not an expert but 30$ per years seems enough, they are some offer at illimited bandwidth and 10Go, else a real server at 30$ but per month for upload account and other with huge space.
Foundation or not, Tank will start the easy alternative if he share password to trusted person ( not necessary important person )

So, at me eye and at this moment: (3 needed foundaters with around same mindset during X years, sorry but real association and registered foundation are very annoying about vote, huge papers and other bother things...)
-Lexikos, as developer
-Fincs, a lot of thing
-Tank, first step
add to this Skan, tidbit, et caetera,.. all chairs that you want
I don't speak about all superb admin we have, but pyramid is needed.

PS: you can't imagine my desillusion, I was for Poly one years ago... try and fail...

[Zelio]

Just in case of #!$#?%
my PC compute other thing for this week I can't use it atm, but if they are a blackout at http://www.autohotkey.com then you can find a basic archive with all posts and threads (unformatted link, raw data of URLDownloadToFile) at http://www.ahkarchive.com/archive/archive120926.zip (1.1Go to 4.7go 205000 files and path, 20h work for an emergency, some simple script added)

[Menixator]

congrats on the first step tank!

[nnnik]

This really worked out fast.
Great THX to tank.
Are we also allowed to discuss the next steps here?
There are certain things I'd like to know about:

1. Plans on keeping the current Forum content.
2. What are the plans on the other subforums that are still missing (Offtopic,Programming,De-Forum)?
3. What about the plans on restoring the content of the old German community?

[Pulover]

Your initiative is very important, tank. Thank you and congratulations!
I'm also wondering about the contents from the old forum. Should we wait for the topics to be copied?