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New Zope Foundation bylaws passed

After a lot of hard work a special Zope Foundation membership meeting called for December 12, 2008 passed a new set of bylaws unanimously.


The current bylaws were based on those of the Eclipse foundation, which shortly after adoption were discovered to be too heavyweight for the kind of organization the Zope Foundation aims to be. Evolving the existing bylaws into something more appropriate and manageable was attempted but failed.

The proposed bylaws are based on the bylaws of the Python Software Foundation, with some additional improvements the PSF itself is intending to implement. They were also brought in line with the fact that the Zope Foundation expects to conduct most of its meetings and communication online.

The major differences between the current and the proposed bylaws are:

  • Making changes to the bylaws becomes easier.
  • There will be only three classes of members:

1. Nominated Members, an individual and free membership that replaces the old 'committer' and 'associate' memberships.  There will no longer be any formal relation between being a Zope Committer and becoming a Foundation Member.

2. Sponsorship Members, members who financially sponsor the Foundation.

3. Emeritus Members, members who retired from active membership.



The new bylaws can be downloaded from the Zope Foundation website at

http://foundation.zope.org/bylaws/zope_foundation_bylaws.pdf