A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

Blog post by mmadia on Sun, 2010-05-30 14:24

Some days ago, I realized that Haiku, Inc. never gave an official status update on its progress. Looking back at where we were last year, a lot of progress has been made. While this is not an official statement from the BOD, these are just my personal observations and recollections.

Organization Structure:

  • Formal meetings, with recorded minutes
  • Voted in a new Board of Directors
  • Elected officers (President, Vice President, Treasurer)
  • Rotated various account passwords
  • Removed non-board members from the private mailing list
  • Created a new public mailing list for Haiku, Inc.

Legal Forms:

  • Updated NY State's DOS Process
  • Filed IRS form 8822 : Change of Address
  • Filed IRS 990-N, documented it
  • Filed IRS 8734 (wip)

Bank Accounts:

  • Closed original account
  • Opened free business checking account
  • Got multiple BOD members as bank account signers
  • Authorized signers to phone in wire transfers (wip)

Donations:

  • PayPal now supports EUR as a second currency
  • Google Checkout as an additional donation method
  • Amazon Payments as an additional donation method
  • Revamped donation page
  • Reduced PayPal Fees from 2.9% + 0.30 down to 2.2% + 0.30 (eg, an exta $7 on every $1000 for ever.)

Misc:

  • drafted a yearly budget
  • drafted an improved TM policy
  • re-established contact with volunteer CPA
  • 2008 financial report
  • 2010 budget fundraiser
  • researched paying contractors
  • alloted $8,000 USD for a total of 800 hours of contractual development
  • funded a new dedicated hosting service

TODO:

  • 2009 financial reports (wip)
  • SSL Certification (wip)
  • IRS papers (8734 wip)
  • By Laws
  • Trademark policy (wip)
  • Registering Trademark (wip)

I'm feeling really good about the TODO list too. The By laws, registering the TM, and "finishing" the TM policy are still some daunting items.

Personally, the Work-In-Progress TM policy is going in a good direction. Though it still has areas that need to be fleshed out, as well as review by any of you and the project at large. Very recently, aldeck pointed out some links, which are mentioned in More-TM-Policy-ideas-from-other-orgs-Ideas-on-selling-TM-goods

In the next weeks, I'm going to be reading the Software Freedom Center for some more ideas relating to the TM Policy, as well as registering it. This is something that I feel needs to be done in time for R1.

Hope you enjoyed the read and I'll be happy to explain any of this in more detail.

Comments

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by jeanmarc - 2010-05-30 18:21

I know it's a kind of a "dirty" job but all your work for Haiku,inc is greatly appreciated
Thanks indeed,

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by Howitzer - 2010-05-30 19:04

As a newbie to Haiku OS, I can't help but wondering: Do you people mean to make Haiku a commercial product? As in, meaning-to-sell-for-hard-pennies? Or will it go about an Ubuntu-like way? (Free distribution, but paying professional support) Or some other way?

EDIT: Totally forgot to congratulate you! (Congratulations)

Just curious.

Adrian

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by Garjala - 2010-05-31 09:55

As a newbie to Haiku OS, I can't help but wondering: Do you people mean to make Haiku a commercial product? As in, meaning-to-sell-for-hard-pennies? Or will it go about an Ubuntu-like way? (Free distribution, but paying professional support) Or some other way?

I could be wrong, but I understood that Haiku Inc. was created in order to make donations tax free.

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by mikebryant - 2010-05-30 23:10

Good stuff Matt, the work is indeed much appreciated!

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by Fuddyman - 2010-05-31 03:43

"Created a new public mailing list for Haiku, Inc."

the link is broken, the page says Error: No such list. Please choose another.

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by tonestone57 - 2010-05-31 04:14

I get same for that link too but I found it and looks like this works.
http://www.freelists.org/list/haiku-inc

Edit:

I thank you for the work you put in Matt and others. The report was more on the admin side of things. I did not mind reading it but I think most users are interested on the OS side of things (ie: changes to Haiku itself over the year). ;-)

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by nielx - 2010-05-31 09:27

I really like the new donation page!

Kudos to the Haiku Inc. BOD.

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by humdinger - 2010-05-31 17:40

These are rather thankless and boring tasks, so having someone to take them on is really very appreciated. Thanks Matt!

And yes, Haiku Inc. was founded as a means to collect and distribute donations (only tax free in the US) to further Haiku's development and adoption in the "market". It also keeps an eye on the Haiku name and logo. While the code is free to use, having them trademarked enables us to prevent incompatible or poor quality distributions to drag Haiku down with them. :)

Regards,
Humdinger

Re: A summary of Haiku, Inc.'s accomplishments in the past year

by mmadia - 2010-05-31 20:19

While I've been the driving energy behind many of these, it's worth pointing out that all of this has been a group effort in one way or another.

There's even bits that non-BOD members helped with -- pre-existing research into what forms to file, helping with the donation page, and researching and setting up the dedicated web host are some examples.