Foundation Motown has several types of memberships and different ways to become a member. We believe that the vital existence of the foundation is dependent on the effort that is put into the community. Therefore we use a membership system where several ways of input are accepted. The accepted currency for the membership fee is either an amount of money or time. The amount is dependent on both the type of participant – individual or company – and the type of membership. In other words, anyone can become a member as long as effort is given in order to improve, maintain and evolve the Motown software.
The main benefit of becoming a member of the Motown Foundation is having the opportunity to help shape current and future versions of Motown software to meet their market and product requirements. Members have direct influence on the direction of the foundations corporate strategy. Members annually elect the Board of Directors, where each gold or platinum member can stand for election. Furthermore, members can advise the board during the yearly general assembly and as a guest in the monthly board meetings. Additionally, members are allowed to show a membership logo on their website and members are praised on the membership page. More information on the benefits of becoming a member can be found here.
Organization
The Motown foundation is a membership corporation, so Members serve a similar role as shareholders do in publicly traded corporations. Members may cast one vote in board elections.
Members are not empowered to speak officially on behalf of the Motown foundation as a whole, nor do they have any special rights to influence technical direction of any Motown project that they are not otherwise elected as a committer or technical committee member on. While members often serve in many capacities both at the Foundation level and within Motown projects, their only specific organizational rights are to vote in board elections.
Memberships
There are many opportunities for individuals and companies to get involved with the Motown community. Motown uses three Membership types: silver, gold and platinum. With each type of membership, different type of benefits are associated. Detailed information on how to become a member can be found here.
Legal
Members act as shareholders of the corporation. As such, each member has a single vote on electing directors to the board.
Organizationally, members do not have specific standing within any Motown projects. However most members are active as individuals within Motown projects on their own technical or social merits, and once a member often find more ways to get involved in more Motown projects.
While the board and relevant officers are directly responsible for providing oversight to the many Motown projects, members often work within projects to help ensure projects run smoothly.
Communication
The central place for member-focused announcements and discussions is the privately archived members@motown.io mailing list. This is used for a wide variety of purposes: both proposing and discussing new technical or policy ideas within the Motown foundation, and any formal announcements to the membership from the board or corporate officers.
By policy, members have the right to inspect and review the archives of all mailing lists at Motown. This policy is designed to ensure that every member can independently inspect all corporate operations, and the operations of all Motown projects. Thus members may review all private mailing lists (for example) about internal legal affairs, fundraising, security issues, as well as any private@ lists used by our Motown projects’ technical committees.
While members may send messages to any private lists, they do not automatically receive any special merit in terms of influencing the technical direction of Motown projects. Merit in Motown projects is gained within each individual project community, and membership does not convey any other special privileges.
Meetings
The board typically holds an Annual Members Meeting, where a new board of directors is elected. The board decides in what way the meetings are held. When a physical member meeting is organized, members are always allowed to join with the use of a digital medium to join.
Community
The ability of members to influence the Motown foundation is simultaneously major and immaterial. On one hand, members vote on the Board of Directors, which clearly affects strategic policies of the foundation. On the other hand, membership grants individuals no other special merit within any of our projects.
Technical
The membership as a whole and individually does not provide technical direction for any Motown project directly; every technical committee is free to manage its technical direction independently. Technical committees are the governing body for their project, and are expected to manage the project’s technology in the best interest of the whole project community, independent of outside commercial influence.
This is similar to how the board does not set technical direction for projects: this is a key reflection of how the Motown foundation is intentionally structured to provide maximum freedom to its projects.