Friends of OpenDocument Inc. is an Australia-based volunteer organisation with members around the world.
Effective 8 September 2005, Friends of OpenDocument Inc. is an incorporated association in the State of Queensland, Australia.
Our mission
To support the work of community volunteers in promoting, improving and providing user assistance for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) and open source software designed to operate on data in this format.
Membership
Membership is free. Members may be individuals or organisations. See Classes of Membership. For privacy reasons, the membership list is not published, nor is it given or sold to any other person or group.
To join Friends of OpenDocument Inc., send an email to membership -at- friendsofopendocument -dot- com, giving your name and address, and stating that you support the purposes of the association, as given in the mission statement above.
You will need to be nominated and seconded by members of the association. To expedite your application, include their names and email addresses, or have them contact us directly.
Privacy Policy
We take your privacy very seriously and we will never sell, rent or otherwise distribute the information you submit on our website. Your personal information, including your email address, will be kept in strict confidence.
Contact information
Friends of OpenDocument Inc.
544 Carlyle Gardens
Beck Drive North
Condon, Qld. 4815
Australia
info -at- friendsofopendocument -dot- com
Management committee
(re-elected October 2009)
President: Eric Lindsay
Vice-President: Lin M Hall
Secretary/Treasurer: Jean Hollis Weber
Committee member: Rob Unsworth
Committee member: Ana Young
Related documents
Rules of the Association (amended December 2007) – PDF
Classes of Membership – PDF or HTML
Incorporated Associations Good Business Guide – PDF
What is an incorporated association?
From the website of the Queensland Government’s Department of Fair Trading:
“Generally, incorporation under the provisions of the Associations Incorporation Act 1981 is available to any association that is formed or carried on for any lawful purpose except those designed for the purpose of financial gain for its members.
“An incorporated association receives recognition as a legal entity separate from its members. Once incorporated, an association has all the powers of an individual and is legally able to do things in its own name, such as own land, sign a lease, or appear in court.”
In other words, it’s much like a company except that any money must be spent to further the aims of the association (given above as “our mission”), not be distributed to the members. Of course, the organisation can reimburse legitimate and authorised expenses incurred by members.
Why Queensland?
The founders of the association, Eric Lindsay and Jean Hollis Weber, live in Queensland. They got tired of waiting for someone else to start a similar organisation elsewhere in the world, so they decided to do it themselves. This was the quickest, easiest, and least expensive way for them to set up a group to handle money for the purposes stated above.