Support OpenVoiceOS as Nonprofit Foundation

General Discussion News
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OpenVoiceOS (OVOS) is a collective of programmers and hardware enthusiasts. We formed in 2019-2020 as an offshoot of this great Mycroft community, bringing a handful of third-party projects under one roof. One of those projects was an extension of Mycroft itself, which slowly became independent of its parent. Our great history can be found on these forums as well;

Over the years, with their employers’ consent, those of us paid to work on relevant projects migrated to the OVOS codebase, which enabled those members to spend company time on our open-source projects. In this roundabout fashion, the OVOS assistant, which will receive a name of its own in the coming weeks, became an accidental fork of Mycroft. We’ve been operating in this manner for over two years without giving the arrangement much thought.

With MycroftAI reduced to a skeleton crew, and the transfer of most development operations to Neon, our ecosystem has been abruptly reduced to projects which had already switched to our code. Neon derives from our code. KDE derives from our code. We are aware of no other Mycroft-based projects in production.

If Neon represents the future of Mycroft’s commercial operations, OpenVoiceOS represents the survival of the adjacent open-source community, and our maintained code is every project’s best hope for the future. Circumstances have made it abundantly clear that, although we’re fortunate to enjoy an extremely friendly relationship with our members’ employers, we’re just as fortunate to have endured this period intact. Such an informal relationship with the world at large is no longer tenable.

We’ve decided to become a nonprofit association under Dutch law. OpenVoiceOS will be registered as OpenVoiceOS V.z.w. (Dutch: “Vereninging zonder winstoogmerk”, a nonprofit association, as distinguished from a foundation.) The association will support the OVOS community in legal and financial matters by securing donations of cash, hardware, and other relevant aid. These donations will be used to facilitate software development, promotion, and support.

To establish the association and equip it with a positive balance for ongoing expenses, we have determined that we need to raise €3033. We’re deeply grateful for any support. You can chip in at our GoFundMe campaign;

https://www.gofundme.com/f/openvoiceos

Please feel free to approach us with any questions or concerns. You can expect to hear more from us over the next few weeks, as we finalize our plans for long-term stability, a more structured development process, and much more!

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Thanks for making my Mark 2 useful. Happy to chip in. Good luck!

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Thank you very much!

We will make it happen and will not let you down.

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Done! can I borrow your post and share it in home-assistant forum?

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Sure, no problem at all. If you require anything else, just let us know.

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Done: OpenVoiceOS is going nonprofit association and we are looking for help and support - Social - Home Assistant Community here are some other geeks that surely are interested in the Association

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And I have added the citation, sorry I forgot!

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Thanks and keep up the good work. Supported and appreciated.

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I am thrilled and astonished to announce that we are already funded!

Our sincerest, eternal thanks to everyone who donated their hard-earned money, and thanks also to those of you who donate your valuable time to our open source projects. We are nothing without our community, and we’re all excited to keep growing together.

You’ll hear from the team regarding stretch goals in a few days. Frankly, we thought it would take longer to get here

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17 posts were split to a new topic: Will OVOS or Neon Support Continued Dinkum Development? TL;DR No they won’t

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Once set up, can the OVOS Association become the European partner of Neon.ai for distribution of the USB keys and the hardware?

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It looks like your goal for this fundraising effort has been met. Is there another goal I can contribute funds towards?

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Hi! Thanks for your support, and thanks for asking. We are extending that fundraiser, but we keep hitting our goals faster than we expect. Our full board will chat tomorrow, after which we’ll announce our next target.

I can say that our next goal will most likely be for features, rather than earmarked budgeting, which is to say that the next couple thousand or so will go into our general fund, with a particular eye toward early clerical and legal services. By and large, feature pushes don’t cost us money. They cost volunteer time, so this seems like a good way to balance out a couple of features against the boring likelihood of accountants, notaries, paperwork attorneys, and so forth.

That was where we left things before the weekend. What remains for us to decide is which feature we’ll push for next. I have a pretty good idea what we’re leaning towards, and I’m excited, but I don’t want to tease it until I know for sure it’s what we’re doing.

If anybody would like to donate now, please feel free. The target number will go up during the week, probably by €1.5-3k.

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As promised, a campaign update.

New target, new goal: Robo-Personality

We did it! We’ve hit our most recent target, meaning we’ll enter our new life with a budget for a buildserver and boards. Next on the list, it’s time to show the software some love!

One of the great things about coming into our own is our newfound ability to pursue lofty development goals. We’ve rediscovered some old proposals to give the Assistant its first, rudimentary version of a configurable personality. If you’ve been longing to threaten your Assistant with a reduction in its humor parameter, this is the stretch goal for you!

This first version, to set clear expectations, would not necessarily teach the Assistant to crack its own jokes on the fly, which would be a roadmapped extension. This initiative, the groundwork, would teach the Assistant how to choose between a funny response, a flippant response, a flattering response, and so forth, and how to vary these responses to reflect a nuanced personality. It will be up to skill developers and the community to equip the Assistant with things to say, but the same initiative will expand the community’s ability to help with that.

Our next fundraising target is €6500. If this is achieved, the Robo-Personality Initiative will be an early priority after incorporation.

The beginnings of the Robo-Personality Initiative - which will stay on the back burner until Someday, if this stretch goal is not reached, rather than being cancelled entirely - can be followed on GitHub, where the relevant fallback is being designed. Next would be a design period for the needed extensions to dialog files and the skill framework.

We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank our donors, our early adopters, and especially our user-devs for a touching display of confidence. The OVOS team is excited to be expanding and incorporating, even under these somber circumstances, and we take heart in the knowledge that others are interested. We hope our Assistant, once we round the edges, will support you as gracefully and generously as you have supported us.

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Minor update: our notary advises us that it would cost us several thousand Euros more to establish the Association than it would cost to create the equivalent Foundation, so we’re going to be a Foundation instead.

This should have no effect whatsoever on our actual operations.

@NeonClary could you please edit the thread title to say ‘Foundation’ instead of ‘Association’? @j1nx will edit the post when he has an opportunity.

edit: Thanks, Clary!

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our current stretch goal aims to bring to completion the first Persona stable release

this has now been roadmapped in this github issue, links to current WIP also available below