RE: Henry Luce Foundation Grant to Unicode in Support of Encoding Tangut

Sorry to say but a lot of nonsense in your message.
For status of the Unicode Consortium please refer to http://www.unicode.org/consortium/consort.html

Unicode has always been a member based nonprofit organization and was always welcoming grants of any sort to help its work. Many experts and members have benefited from various organization to facilitate specific encoding work, just look at the encoding proposals that have been posted for decades to see examples.
Tangut is just another example of a targeted grant among dozens. Most of us are volunteering in large part to get this work done.

The only recent change was to go from a 501-c2 to a 501-c3 organization which allows donating organizations to have additional tax benefit under US tax laws (usual disclaimer about not being a tax advice). That's all. It may make easier for some US based constituency to donate to the consortium.

Again refer to the page linked above and stop speculating on what the consortium does. There is no change on its mode of operation. It is still member based and members have the final say (either directly or indirectly through the board and the officers) on all decisions made by the consortium. Tangut encoding has been languishing for years, partially for logistic issues having to do with the fact that Tangut experts are spread all over the world. I welcome any initiative that get Tangut from the void its encoding proposal has been in for years.

Michel
(wearing the Unicode Consortium Secretary hat)

From: unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org] On Behalf Of Philippe Verdy
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 1:16 PM
To: unicode Unicode Discussion
Subject: Re: Henry Luce Foundation Grant to Unicode in Support of Encoding Tangut

Is the Unicode Consortium allowed to receive dedicated grants like a public foundation under US law ?

And if so, how does this conform with the UTC working policies ? I suppose that the Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) will monitor the progresses (to provide payments) but will it influence the agenda and mean that the Tangut encoding will be accelerated, using inputs whose sources will come from only from this Foundation or the UCB SEI ? Can this acceleration be compatible with ISO WG2 agenda and other national interests ?

So why the HLF did not simply join the UTC with normal membership to participate directly in the encoding process but without more rights to fix the working agenda ? Is this a new kind (of UTC membership (and more powerful, even if it does not include vote rights...) ?

The recent announcement causes some questions. because this changes the current practices. The Unicode Consortium for now is still registered as a commercial organization which can then only deliver some limited services in exachange of a payment (such services include membership fees, sales of publications, training programs, participations to live events, and so on...)

But this may be a sign that the Unicode Consortium is about to have its own status changed to become a non-profit charity foundation dedicated to wordlwide promotion of education and culture. Thanks. But this should be clear, and some status will have to be changed to be compatible with US law about non-profit charities.

We've seen another sign of such evolution by Unicode opening its repository of working documents. But the main evolutions would include more open membership conditions, and non discrimination between members. It would change radically the working methods. Or may be it is just the UTC that will become a foundation, founded by grants from the Consortium and for other organizations.

The recent announcement is then very intrigating about how the Consortium will work for the future, it's probably unavoidable that it will become a foundation, when almost all commercial needs have been solved and most remaining issues are about either:

- rare scripts or historic script (whose usage will likely never reach a point of commercial profitability)

- complex text-handling algorithms based on heuristics which have many exceptions and many competing algorothms for various uses, so that they will become standards with lots of difficulties or the winning standard or some algorithms will not come from Unicode but from other working groups (commercial or collaborative open-sourced).

Do we expect then 'The Unicode Consoritum, Inc." to be dissolved later and replaced by "The Unicode Foundation" which could emerge soon, first in parallel to the Consortium (and possibly grouping the efforts currently made in the CLDR TC, the UTC, the BSD SEI, and other cultural foundations including the Wikimedia Foundation, or Unesco and similar international agencies) ? Will that help receive dedicated public grants from government sources or from the general public (with possible tax deduction) ? And how will the current policies be enforced (notably stability policies) ?

2013/9/16 Philippe Verdy <verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr<mailto:verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr>>
Is the Unicode Consortium allowed to receive dedicated grants like a public foundation under US law ?

And if so, how does this conform with the UTC working policies ? I suppose that the Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) will monitor the progresses (to provide payments) but will it influence the agenda and mean that the Tangut encoding will be accelerated, using inputs whose sources will come from only from this Foundation or the UCB SEI ? Can this acceleration be compatible with ISO WG2 agenda and other national interests ?

So why the HLF did not simply join the UTC with normal membership to participate directly in the encoding process but without more rights to fix the working agenda ? Is this a new kind (of UTC membership (and more powerful, even if it does not include vote rights...) ?

2013/9/16 <announcements_at_unicode.org<mailto:announcements_at_unicode.org>>

The Consortium is very pleased to announce the generous grant made by the Henry Luce Foundation<https://www.hluce.org/asia.aspx> to support progress on encoding Tangut. The Luce Foundation has made a one-time grant to the Unicode Consortium to support a December 2013 meeting to further progress the Tangut script for its eventual incorporation into the Unicode Standard and the associated ISO/IEC 10646 International Standard. The meeting will bring together scholars of Tangut and experts in the character encoding process to agree on the character repertoire for this large and complex script. Work on this grant is directed by Dr. Deborah Anderson, Technical Director of the Consortium and the Project Leader of the UC Berkeley's Script Encoding Initiative.

http://unicode-inc.blogspot.com/2013/09/henry-luce-foundation-grant-to-unicode.html
Received on Mon Sep 16 2013 - 16:59:17 CDT