It has been suggested in internal communication of the RISC-V Project that it might make sense for Gentoo to join RISC-V International as a community member. Community membership involves no membership fees but is only open to academic institutions and registered non-profit organisations - so with the Foundation being the legal body behind Gentoo, it would make sense for you guys to handle this - or at least review the membership documents before giving someone else the green light (or lack thereof). You can find the aforementioned documents + link to the joining form at the URL above, towards the end of the page. PS. Not sure if "Filings" is the best component for this, it seems like it might be given the above but by all means move it if it belongs elsewhere.
Marek: Could you clarify why you feel it would beneficial for the Foundation to join that organization as a member? Off the top of my head, the only organization that the Foundation is today a memory of is the Open Invention Network / OIN, as part of the patent consortium. We were an early member, and while we did not contribute any patents of our own to the consortium, we benefited from the Consortium's patent protection (as did Debian and other major distributions).
RISC-V International being a open non-profit organization, and has various technical discussion groups, but do require a membership to join to participate. so either for people to request a individual member or community member as Gentoo Linux Distro. and as Community member there are a priviledges, which list here[1] a) just check "Community Member Benefits" of [1] *) better voice in RISC-V technical direction. *) have potential to elect as Community Board representative (copy from RISC-V International) Accelerated development, reduced risk through open source, ratified ISA. Eligible to participate in workgroups, influence strategy and adoption 6 support programs in Technical Deliverables, Compliance, Visibility, Learning, Advocacy, and Marketplace Member logo / name listing on RISC-V website, by member level 1 case study a year 1 blog per quarter 1 social media spotlight per quarter Event sponsorship discount b) easy for new Gentoo Dev member to join RISC-V, quote of this: For people affiliated with existing member organizations, you do not need to sign up as an Individual – just send us a quick email and we’ll add you to the member portal. c) gain reputation while we as Gentoo Linux doing for RISC-V development [1] https://riscv.org/membership/
Following a bit of discussion within the project, here is a bit more on the subject: 1. We will be able to use the "1 blog per quarter" benefit to give updates on RISC-V support in Gentoo, present our killer features as they appear (e.g. multilib) and overall draw attention to the fact Gentoo Linux offers serious support for this architecture; 2. The "1 case study per year" benefit will likely allow us to draw on technical expertise within RISC-V International while working on low-level issues. One that immediately springs to mind is multilib support; 3. RISC-V International offers various resources (e.g. free development boards) to developers working on this arch and while to the best of my knowledge this has never been explicitly stated, it has been implied that members have priority in queues for such resources.
Releng: do you wish to continue this bug? *Gentoo Foundation* was not eligible for the non-profit before, because we were not a 501(c) organization in the USA. Now that *Gentoo Linux* has joined SPI as an Associated Project, that part could join specifically.
