I agree it should be a separate foundation.
But I am not sure that the crypto face is a flaw to it. Even if 50% of
developments are crypto-related, project like adaptation of kernel or distro
for govt needs change it all. Donations can be for a specific project (like
you said).
Also, this crypto-thing might be a good thing to receive money from US
(RedHat?). It is not a bad thing to have a speciality. ;-)
Focus (cut & pasted): "A charity group, designed to fund Free Software / OSS
development and documentation in Canada which provides benefit to Canadian
businesses and individuals using Linux." That's it! If money's coming from
outside of Canada, it is to make canadians work. If money's coming from
inside of Canada, it is to make sure that canadians' donations are well used
(promoting canadian projects first!). It is a pure financial thing with a
nice charitable goal behind.
+---------+ $ +-------+ +-----------------------+
| Donator +------>| COSDF | - - - | Fund Director & board |
| |<------+ | mgnt | |
+---------+ taxr +-------+ +-----------------------+
/ | \
... ... \
+---+----------+
| Project Fund |
+--------------+
/ \
/ \
+------+----+ +---+---------------------+
| Can. cie | | Can. independant worker |
+-----------+ | - project mgr |
| - programmer |
| - tech writter |
| - tester |
| - .... |
+-------------------------+
It is exactly the same structure as in a corporation except that:
- project's sponsors are replaced by donators;
- products are not own by the corporation;
- it's a non-profitable organisation;
- it promote independant canadian workers (*) (working from home (**)) and
canadian cies;
- it's clean, easy to audit for donators;
- projects can be from small to large scale;
- it is a cheaper solution for donators:
i. They can joint for a specific projects, splitting donations' needed;
ii. There's is no cie in the middle taking an extra 10-15%;
iii. Tax benefits;
iv. better software reuse.
(*): otherwise, a corp will not want to take risks and extra management
overhead. It will use system integrators' services.
(**): cheaper.
Focus is going to be set up by donators. I do not expect to have a large
general purpose fund. I expect to have some large projects with a lot of
money from very few donators and a lot of small projects with various
donators. All of them wants something in exchange: an adaptation of Apache
for their needs, better security in the kernel of Linux, etc. Basically, it
is projects-based.
For non-projec-oriented money, the board decide how to distribute it. Or it
could be a web site where to can give money and choose to which project(s) you
want to contribute.
We can imagine also a small projects setup system. Imagine we want to build
up a income tax calculator running under Linux. Project cost is (let's say)
evaluated to 20k$. Peoples (and cies) who want this piece of software can do
a "donation promises". When we have 20k$ of "donation promises", we start the
project giving it to a small team (one guy?). On delivery, the small team can
be paid and donation "invoiced".
All that sounds a little bit like a "coop�rative", doesn't it?
Regards
Richard Prescott
En r�ponse � Anthony de Boer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> M Taylor wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 11:33:52AM -0400, Matthew Rice wrote:
> > > Anthony de Boer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > > It would be useful to have at least one entity in the Canadian
> > > > Open Source community that can give charitable-donation tax
> receipts, so
> > > > that those who are motivated can financially give back to the
> community.
> > >
> > > Would it be that useful, really? It's the tax credit capped at 17%?
> Someone
> > > with qualms about donating $1000 without the tax credit could just
> give $830
> > > instead.
>
> I believe it's the first $250 that's capped at 17%, and the next couple
> of thousand at 26 or 29%, but I have to admit that for the last couple
> of
> years I've let an accountant do my taxes and saved myself from the
> annual
> night of frustration filling out the forms.
>
> I understand that people have varying positions on donations, but I've
> always tried to support church and cultural groups that IMHO were doing
> good things, and that line on my return does reduce the amount the
> government gets by a noticeable amount.
>
> > It's also a trust issue, since the tax records are available for
> > registered charities and they may be audited by CCRA, there is the
> > appearance of a "clean" oganization.
> > ...
> > For a charity, I suggest a seperate enitity, e.g. "Canadian Open
> > Source Development Fund", which would a charity group, designed to
> fund
> > Free Software / OSS development and documentation in Canada which
> > provides benefit to Canadian businesses and individuals using Linux.
>
> It indeed might be useful for that to be a separate foundation, simply
> so
> that its affairs are as simple as possible and it only performs
> legitimate and open charitable-money functions. Its directors would
> have
> to be at arms-length from the beneficiaries of the fund, and possibly
> also
> at arms-length from CLUE if it adopts an advocacy role. Again, we'd
> have
> to see what we can reasonably support; maybe it could do something to
> help OLS, or help opensource project being worked on by Canadians.
>
> I do note the OpenBSD project is headquartered in Calgary; I'm sure
> that
> elicits a lot of opinions. :-\ My main beef with BSD is that their
> license doesn't keep the code free; the other night I asked a BSD
> developer friend how many lines of his code were in Windows XP, and he
> thought there might be one or two.
>
> Closer to home, there's the FreeS/WAN project, and there are probably a
> few other things as well. Projects happening in Canada may tend to be
> more crypto-oriented due to US law, so that may affect perception of
> this foundation too.
>
> How to set our focus is a bit tricky too; Linux itself at the most
> pedantic definition is just the kernel, and the vast majority of the
> userspace code is portable to other Un*x flavours. Trusting the
> directors to set a reasonable scope would be one thing, and it should
> be possible to earmark your donation toward a specific project if you
> feel overly opinionated. :-/
>
> --
> Anthony de Boer
>
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Mourir plus t�t, c'est profiter de l'�ternit� plus longtemps.
-- Deadflower (Lucky Luke 2002)
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