Guix Foundation Intro

• The GNU Guix project is self-funded - 95% of contributors are volunteers

• Guix has two fiscal Sponsor Organisations:

  • FSF

  • Guix Foundation

• You can Donate to Guix through either via the Guix website

A 'fiscal sponsor' collects donations, and holds assets on behalf of the project.

• Previously there was Guix Europe Foundation

• This year we became Guix Foundation
  • Reflects that we want to support GNU Guix globally
  • Our priorities and focus are driven by our Members
  • We changed banks and added platforms for donations
• Thanks to Simon Tournier and Tanguy Le Carrour for the transition to Guix Foundation - they did a lot of work!

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AGM Goal

Guix Foundation's goal is:

promoting, democratizing, using and developing software and operating systems that respect users' freedoms, supporting in particular usages in personal or scientific research, or in education without any commercial goal. The Association is specially dedicated to supporting the GNU Guix project"

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• Guix Foundation is a members driven Association

  • Members vote for an organising committee (Solidarity Administration Council).

  • From the members a President and Treasurer are elected (the Bureau) who represent the Foundation externally and organise the finances.

  • Members propose ideas, priorities and proposals for Guix Foundation. These are voted on by majority at the AGM or the SAC at other times.

  • Broadly the AGM sets the direction of Guix Foundation for the next year.

AGM Agenda

• Activity status from the Bureau

  • President report (Steve) and Treasurer report (Tanguy)

  • Q&A and discussion

  • Members vote to accept Bureau Activity report

• Q&A with current SAC

  • Overview of SAC role and responsibilities

• Vote for SAC

  • Existing members re-standing vote

  • New members who would like to stand

• Vote for President and Treasurer

• Discussion and vote on any proposals presented by Members

• AOB discussion

• Finish

Delegations and Non-member attendees

• A member can delegate their vote to another member. Each attending member can only represent one other person.

• Delegations

  • Romain Garbage delegated to Ludo

  •  Who would like to represent indieterminancy?

• Non-member attendees

  • People who donate but are not YET members ;-)

  • Can take part and learn but cannot vote

  • Lesik Edelweiss; Hugo Buddelmeij; Daniel Owens

Bureau Activity Report

• What have we worked on?
• What is our financial status?

Sustain & Strengthen Campaign

• October->January 2026 we did a fundraising campaign that was successful

  • Over 140 people stepped forward to become recurring donators
• Donations through the FSF additional to these figures (I don't have visibility)
• SUSE Cares donated $500 (~ €400) our first donation from an organisation/institution - thanks SUSE!
• Guix Days registrations raised €3830 which went a long way to making it sustainable

We estimate that we'll achieve €33,900 of funding

(have not re-checked these figures but will do so)

Budgeted expenses

• Estimated we'd spend ~€28,000 but programmes haven't started as quickly as we forecast so we will likely spend less.

• Forecasted we'd leave the year with €13,000 of cash, will likely be better.

• We keep a contingency reserve for critical expenses - we will try and build this further using existing funds and FSF transfers
• The intention is to revise this working budget every six months - this is now due - in particular we don't know how recurring donations will hold up.

Hosting and infrastructure

This category covers both project infrastructure and developer experience. A great development experience is important for Guix's sustainability so that happy contributors continue. Over 2022-24 there were 454 contributors, with the majority (60%) being 'casual' (less than 20 patches).

"We really need to improve the CICD situation. I see we have so many system tests that catch issues. Let's make sure each patch has run at least a couple of those system tests before it is being merged, or even before a reviewer has even looked at [it] ..."

"Minimizing the required work needed to keep packages up to date ..."

Actions:

• Upgrades to build farm storage (done): which should improve builds
• Supporting Codeberg (agreed): 

  • Guix Foundation will join Codeberg e.V and donate €1500 per year

This is our critical category, we retain a contingency budget for an emergency and are trying to increase it.

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Guix has two build-farms, one of which is donated and one of which is paid for by Guix Foundation. Hosting for this is done by Aquilenet. Guix Foundation also pays for some hosting (Hertzner) which is used for the Guix Web sites.

Community and Collaboration

This category covers ways in which our existing users and developers can come together to communicate and collaborate. As a highly distributed community we're dependent on both technical and social relationships.

Actions:

• Guix Days (done): organised registrations which meant we achieved a lot more sustainability
• GuixConf proposal (failed): we were unable to achieve consensus for this.

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How you can help:

• There's budget to organise small, local Guix meetups
• Propose other ideas that would improve our community collaboration

To do more in this category we need volunteers to come forward with ideas, proposals and energy. Any member can get involved and help - we'd love to hear from you!

Advocacy and Education

To have a healthy, sustainable and active project we want to attract new users to Guix. This means educating, advocating and promoting Guix in other communities.

Many projects do this by members promoting by attending Events, Conferences and running stands or doing talks. The role Guix Foundation can play is by connecting our members together and supporting these activities.

Opportunity for members to ...

• Run a stand at an Event
• Do an installfest so more people can try Guix
• Give a talk in a tech community or at a conference
• Teach Guix to students
• Volunteer to organise Guix Summer of Code or Outreachy

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Guix Development

Guix Foundations goal is to "develop software and operating systems" specifically Guix. We do that indirectly with infrastructure, we can also directly accelerate development. This will be in the form of small grants.

• Experiment with a Grant system (agreed):
  • Modelled on Clojurists Together
  • Light-weight proposal from people seeking a grant
  • Decisions focus on high-impact areas identified in the community - these come from the User Survey
  • Only 'ask' is that people provide a monthly report that's published on what they've done - high trust and low admin
  • Grants will be small - it's partial support - given our size as a community
  • Will be formally announced in the next few weeks

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🙋🏼

Opportunity to:

• Propose Guix Development that would be high-impact
• Come up with ideas that developers might be interested in
• Donate to increase the pool of funds available for Grants

Foundation Operations

Running an Association legally and dealing with the banking system is complicated. Tanguy is an unsung hero, spending hours and hours a month working through all the admin and accounting - he deserves our thanks!

The Foundation has seen a lot of growth with new members, we want to continue that and also get members involved! It should be a truly members-driven organisation.

• Improve communications (not done):
  • Revise the Web site and add budget and reports for transparency
  • Update members regularly
• Add additional funding platforms (agreed):
  • GitHub Sponsors and Liberapay (in process)
• Annual General Assembly (online)
• Explore other funding options - sponsorship from organisations / grants (stretch)
  • OpenSats Grant for ~85000 USD
• Agreeing SAC <->Bureau ways of working
  • This has taken up some time as it's actually quite difficult

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Treasurer Activity Report

Treasurer is the key role in the Foundation and the one that takes up the most effort. On a weekly basis Tanguy organises new members joining, chases members who have not paid their fees, makes sure that donations are received correctly and adds all of this to our Accounts (which are public). 

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Treasurer Financial report 2026

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How you can help:

• Convert your membership and/or donation to a regular automated payment.
• We have about 15 members who have lapsed
• This can be either through an automated bank payment or credit card

Vote to accept/decline the Bureau Activity Report

Activity Report Q&A

Activity report Q&A

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Q&A with current SAC

Q&A with SAC

Any member can join the SAC but it requires active involvement with discussions, votes and organising the Foundation. There are regular meetings (every 3 months) and multiple discussions/votes. If a SAC member misses three votes/meetings they are removed from the SAC to keep it manageable.

Q&A with current SAC:

• Andreas, Fredrik, Simon, Steve, Tanguy, Jelle
• Graham (unable to attend)

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Members vote for an organising committee (Solidarity Administration Council). The SAC makes decisions on behalf of the members by majority vote. Any member can make a proposal and the SAC will consider it, the SAC is your representative.

For example, to upgrade the build-farms storage the President sought information from the Guix admin team, then put together a budgeted proposal which was discussed and voted on by the SAC.

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New members standing

Vote for SAC

Existing members restanding

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Any Members can stand to join the organising committee (Solidarity Administration Council). The 2025 SAC was 7 members, it could be a bit larger but shouldn't be too big or it risks being unmanageable. The main requirement is that people have the time and energy to take part.

The President and Treasurer are part of the SAC but are separate votes.

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Vote for Treasurer

Vote for President and Treasurer

Vote for President

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Any Members can stand for President or Treasurer.

• The Treasurer is responsible for handling all financial aspects of the Foundation. Specifically this means dealing with payment platforms, handling adding/removing members, working with the Bank, keeping the accounts and submitting French legal documents.
• The President represents the Foundation externally. De-facto this means organising fundraising campaigns, communicating with members and organising activities. Disappointingly and surprisingly there is NO Presidential jet!

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Proposals Discussion/Vote

Proposals discussion and votes

• Anyone have ideas for where Guix Foundation should focus?
• Do members have particular activities they'd like to propose?
• Any topics worth exploring for the group?

Members can propose priorities for Guix Foundation, ideas and thoughts about what we should do as a group. This can be done at any time, but at the AGM all members can vote (and pass) such proposals.

The only changes we can't make is alterations to the Regulations of the Foundation. 

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🙋🏼

Final opportunity (AOB) to bring up any discussion points, ideas, thoughts about Guix Foundation before we close down the AGM.

Thank You!