On 9/11/20 06:11, Joseph Armbruster via AMSAT-BB wrote:
Bruce,
When you say "everything that ARDC funds must be Open", as an observer, it makes me squirm in my seat just a little bit. First, there's nothing in their articles of incorporation about that, ref: https://www.ampr.org/wp-content/uploads/articles.pdf.
Nonprofits are advised to keep their articles of incorporation as general as possible and put the more specific stuff in the Bylaws where they can be more easily changed as needed.
I know that only means so much, and says nothing about it's membership and how they feel about things, but it is sufficient to say, that it funded at least one activity, namely the sale of some amateur IPs to a commercial entity, that many would argue is not an "Open" activity. I suppose exceptions can always be made when there are Mega-bucks involved :-). I get it. I completely understand Phils response and how it is an action of financial opportunity, which has and will continue to benefit the amateur community. Nothing more to say except high-five to Phil and his crew for being in the right place at the right time, maintaining good relationships and leveraging a resource at a good time! Quite the story, indeed!
ARDC is not a membership organization. Its policy is set by its board of directors.
We have a pretty specific and widely accepted definition of "open": any intellectual property we fund must be made freely available under one of the accepted open source or Creative Commons licenses, as appropriate. It does not mean that anything and everything ARDC has in its files must be published. I don't think you'd expect us to openly publish access credentials for our investment accounts, for example. But we will release our financial information as required for any nonprofit.
ARDC expects to fund most open IP development through grants, but we may also offer to "buy out" certain specific pieces of existing IP. E.g., we may pay the publisher of a book or magazine or the author of a proprietary computer program that we consider especially valuable to make their work freely available under an open source or Creative Commons license. Either way, ARDC's primary purpose is to increase the amount of freely available technology, technical and educational information available to hams and other experimenters.
Since our ultimate goal is education, we also contribute to scholarship funds. This year we created a block of new scholarships through the Foundation for Amateur Radio and we also matched, dollar for dollar, every existing scholarship awarded by the ARRL Foundation.
Phil