Yes, you can join any time throughout the year. You just need to send us the completed Membership Form. The annual fees will be adjusted to cover only the remaining months of the calendar year
Any legal entity can join the Collaboration. To calculate the size of the company, you should indicate the number of employees of the legal entity signing the contract. If you are a public institution part of an overarching legal entity, you can check if you can join through them.
How much time a member representative dedicates to the collaboration and the number of activities they participate in is optional. It is however expected they attend the board meetings (which occur online at least twice a year).
Yes, you can appoint a colleague to attend and vote i your place.
Nothing changes: you will still be able to ask your questions in the forum (with, as before the launch of the Collaboration, no guaranteed response) and you will still be able to attend the WR Workshops. The licensing of the White Rabbit Technology remains unchanged, so you will still be able to continue using and modifying the technology. In fact, due to the creation of the Collaboration you will indirectly benefit from a higher quality open source technology. If you don't join: you will not be able to use the WR Trademark on your implementation of the WR Technology, you will not be able to get direct and dedicated support from the team of WR engineers at CERN, nor take part of the discussions to shape the future of the technology.
CERN is itself a member of the WR Collaboration (WRC). Part of the WR team at CERN is now dedicated to work for the WRC Bureau and paid by the WRC, while the rest of the WR developers at CERN work on CERN-specific developments or WRC projects.
Historically, one of the reasons to create the WRC was the increasing difficulty to cope with all requests for support and collaboration (e.g. to make WR evolve or to develop applications based on WR) coming to the WR team at CERN from external actors. Despite the good will of the lead WR developers, the process was becoming extremely taxing for them and sometimes frustrating for external users and collaborators. The WRC is our solution to this problem. WR membership fees get used to pay people working in the WRC Bureau, who provide support and ensure the maintenance of the fundamental building blocks of WR. Because the creation of the WRC is our way of avoiding some undesirable situations from the past, we should privilege collaboration of the WR team at CERN with members of the WRC.
The WR team at CERN reserves however the right to work with people outside the WRC in very exceptional circumstances.
It is very strongly recommended for entities willing to collaborate on the development of WR Technology to join the Collaboration, because that is what makes it sustainable and manageable today. The growth of the WR Technology ecosystem must be coordinated, and it takes a considerable amount of effort to do so. Your membership fees pay in part for that effort and allow us to keep the technology in a healthy state and to provide optimal support to members, be they users, developers or both.
Yes
There are many benefits.
One clear benefit is the access to very competent people in the Bureau. The benefit for the Colalboration is that projects get announced and there is a chance to coordinate it. Today there are a lot of redundant efforts out there.
If a common need is established in a form of project by a number of members (N), then the support from the Bureau is Nx (hours from each
member), which can be non-egligible. If the project is to develop a feature, this feature would typically need to interface with the WR core technology. By developing this feature within the project supported by the WRC Bureau, an official interface between the WR Core technology and this feature is established, and WRC will commit to maintain/support this interface. We've seen people developing cool stuff that then was broken once there was a new WR release. If the project is to develop a feature that should be included in the WR Core technology, by working from the beginning with the WRC within a project, things are much smoother.
By announcing the intention to work on such project, you might find out that there are more people interested who can contribute.
