In early 2009 the Community Oversight Committee (also known as the core team) sent the OSM board a message that began:
"The Core Team would like OSM to investigate and report on the feasibility of creating some sort of company which can deal with the financial issues currently facing the project.
• as a means of handling revenue and expenditure needed by the project without sacrificing OSM's non-profit nature.
• as a means of attracting or developing new funding sources.
• to make it easier to disburse funds to individuals and organisations to compensate them for work performed which furthers the goals of the project."
The board spent most of 2009 considering how to respond to this in the context of our responsibilities as a non profit board, which are different from the responsibilities of COC members or other people involved in the Joomla! Project. In the extensive work that was done in response to this email, the board made the decision that it was important to take a step back. That is, that the COC was proposing a solution, but to a set of problems that had not really been well defined. So, we took the three points on the list as goals and sought to examine how best to reach them, whether through the formation of a for profit company or some other means. So as goals, we knew we wanted to increase revenues, maintain non profit status for OSM, and create the possibility of compensating key individuals and organizations. However, the board did not accept that the solution necessarily had to be the creation of a for profit company
