Legal

The OSADL eG is an international cooperative registered in Germany according to German public law which was adapted to the European Cooperative Law in August 2006. The OSADL eG was founded on December 8, 2005 and was assigned the register number 440085 (cooperative register) at the District Court of Stuttgart, Germany. The OSADL eG was granted membership in the Württembergischer Genossenschaftsverband, Stuttgart, Germany.

Briefly, the main organs of a cooperative are the General Assembly of the regular members, the Supervisory Board and the Board of Directors. The General Assembly elects several regular members to the Supervisory Board which, in turn, elects other regular members to the Board of Directors. A member may only be elected to one of the boards at a time.

Why a cooperative?

The fundamental idea of the cooperative movement is to create a community that can do what is impossible for the individual alone (Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen). In doing so, the cooperative focuses not only on the benefit of its members but also on the benefit of the entire society. In the same way, for example, an agricultural cooperative allows farmers to work more effectively and to create more and better food for everybody, OSADL develops software on request of its members but makes it available to the rest of the world. Since, apparently, there is a wide overlap between the underlying philosophy of the cooperative and the Open Source movement, it was decided to found the Open Source Automation Development Lab as a cooperative.

The OSADL by-laws

The OSADL by-laws are available in PDF format; the original version in German can be downloaded from here. An English version is also available.