Non-profit status is the best way to go. The organization should qualify under 501(c)(3) of the tax code.
It's not too difficult to set up and keep running. There are many examples of non-profit open source companies. The LLC organization is intended for profit-oriented companies. The advantage of non-profit status is that the project will always remain what is stated in its charter, perhaps "develop and distribute Habari software." By way of negative example, there is no possibility of the following scenario. An interloper might appear after a few years, create confusion, breed resentment, drive out non-aligned voting members, and seize control of the LLC for the purpose of generating profits to himself. Instead, the organization will by law be non-profit and will remain devoted to its stated mission. Other free and open source organizations have acquired intellectual property such as trademarks. Imagine that the organization trademarks a graphical logo and it gains great popularity. It would be for the best if a non-profit organization devoted to Habari software owned that trademark, and not an LLC. Let me speak of a different situation: the history of Wordpress. What has happened there is not optimal. First, it started with the gloss of a free software project. Eventually, the lead developer opened up a for-profit web site called wordpress.com. There was some spam associated with that site for short time. While Wordpress remains free software, I just have to wonder why Wordpress software has not advanced more technologically. Wordpress does not utilize PDO or even PHP 5 . My main problem with Wordpress today is that the software's development has stagnated. If Wordpress had been directed by a non-profit organization all along, wordpress.com would have been much different. Perhaps the software wouldn't be stagnating the way it is today. While Wordpress is nice in it's own way, I believe we should go in a slightly different direction. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
