I did a little leg work to see what the Gnome and KDE folks are doing. http://foundation.gnome.org/legal/ http://foundation.gnome.org/finance/ (Yes, the 2007 books are not available! Naughty Naughty!) Looks like they run the show themselves, but get free-ish legal services from SFLC
http://ev.kde.org/ These guys also run the show themselves. Do we know just how much time gets spent doing all this book keeping and ground work for these foundations? I get the feeling its a bit of work at the start to setup all the copyright, trademarks, bank accounts, tax forms etc etc, but once its going its probably not that hard to do. (No im not putting my hand up...) Toma 2009/2/7 Ravenlock <ravenl...@ravenlock.us>: > Hello, > > [Not a development topic.. but I need to hit the right audience] > > Last year, with our acceptance in GSoC, it came to my attention that we > might possibly benefit from forming an official 501(c)(3) Non Profit > Organization. This has become fresh in my mind again this year due to > GSoC, but also due to the "Bounty" that has appeared regarding the E > File Manager. > > Forming an NPO has many benefits I'm told. I don't pretend to fully > understand all of them, but here are the ones that seem most immediately > applicable to E: > > 1) A third party to manage our "assets": > Money, copyrights, trademarks, etc > 2) A way to collect earmarked donations: > I believe we could accept a general donation for E, > or monies for specific tasks (Like EFM work) > 3) An entity to absorb IRS tax obligations: > Google pays our organization money for each student > who completes GSoC. The money gets sent to an > individual[1] (for deposit into the E fund, held by > another individual[2]). Individual[1] has tax > obligations. > 4) Protection from personal liability: > They say anyone can sue anyone else for anything > these days. Sounds good to be protected from that. > 5) Copyright/Trademark enforcement: > If we had a need, > 6) Donations to E become tax deductible for he who > donates. > > Now, all of the above might sound like simply more work, more > bookkeeping, and unnecessary structural changes to E. However, there > are presently organizations out there that are in fact NPOs, whose > function is to be an umbrella NPO for FOSS projects. One such > organization is the Software Freedom Conservancy. > > http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org > > They provide services to many FOSS orgs. Some of which are very notable > names: > > http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/members/ > > There is also a sibling organization (Software Freedom Law Center) which > provides legal representation for member projects: > > http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ > > The SFLC works closely with the Free Software Foundation, GNU Compiler > Collection Steering Committee, and many others. > > The SFC/SFLC is a well established organization who already has the > structure, personnel, and facilities to handle all of the above. Their > goal is to provide these services with little or no changes to its > member orgs. > > So, I'm writing this purely to kick up a discussion. To generate Q&As. > I don't have all the (any?) answers, but I'm willing to do the legwork > to uncover them. > > Your thoughts? > > -- > Regards, > Ravenlock > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) > software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to > build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local > resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and > Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com > _______________________________________________ > enlightenment-devel mailing list > enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
