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Dear Community.
Some of us, including me and Chris (main Chris) have been working very hard to get Fink under the legal umbrella of a non profit organization. The ultimate goal is to have an IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation in the United States to begin our "journey" with.
This is not only necessary to offer some better legal stance to Fink but also to protect those who are very deeply involved with Fink, as well as to protect the assets that belong to Fink (like the logo).
Of course we also wish to create such a facility so that we can accept donations in a professional manner and this is exactly where your opinion is needed. I and I hope that most will agree believe strongly that Fink is at a point where it needs organizational guidance to improve the overall situation, to allow Fink to grow beyond what it is now. This costs money, because it includes , amongst many other things, buying better hardware to publish better binary distributions from or the ability for the Core Developer to meet in real life. The possibility to create Cd's which can actually be sent to individuals or bought in a store for a very small fee.
Many non-profit organizations have some form of membership program, simply because it makes the life of the treasurer a lot easier. Economically speaking a Non-Profit is simply a company that always "should" have a big 0 at the very end of the big fiscal report. When you know that you have xx members paying y $ a year you can easily calculate what expenses you can afford and you can match your running costs a lot better.
Is a membership something the Fink community would consider accepting? Of course occasional contributions which are spontaneous and based on ones ability to give are never wrong, the simply complicate the whole process a bit if such a non-profit is dependent ONLY on those spontaneous "gifts".
I would like to discuss the pros and cons of such a membership system PRIOR to even suggesting it be incorporated into our plans. So please spill your thoughts.
DISCLAIMER: Just to make absolutely sure this is understood. Fink has no allegations to ever make profit with Fink. This is merely a step to improve our service toward the community. Fink is a big project and the bigger it gets, the more infrastructure it needs. Individuals can only supply so much of it and we are slowly running out of it. A non-profit org to supply the money and resources needed to build and uphold such an infrastructure is the only reason why Chris and I have looked into this.
PS: David HÃhn aka Darian Lanx aka dmalloc _always_ refers to me! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (Darwin)
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