Something like the Software Freedom Conservancy was something I was hoping existed - I don't know if anyone else has ever heard of them, but I bet they could help.
Yeah, I was looking at mac1.metal instances which are surprisingly cheap for macs, but still pretty expensive. —Mark _______________________ Mark E. Anderson <[email protected]> MacPorts Trac WikiPage <https://trac.macports.org/wiki/mark> GitHub Profile <https://github.com/markemer> On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 9:14 PM Andrew Janke <[email protected]> wrote: > Software Freedom Conservancy exists largely to help FLOSS orgs do this > sort of thing safely and conveniently, while retaining independent > governance. I believe Homebrew had a good experience with them, and > Buildbot itself is a member. Was that one of the options considered when > this question came up before? > > https://sfconservancy.org/ > > Amazon AWS supports FLOSS projects by providing free AWS Promotional > Credits to FLOSS projects. It looks like you could maybe use these to buy > mac1.metal EC2 instances, and that would give you full-machine root access. > But I dunno; those are expensive instances and the provisioning level and > conversion process seems a little complicated. The AWS mac1.metal VMs are > Intel-based, not Apple Silicon. > > > https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/aws-promotional-credits-open-source-projects/ > > I dunno how much credits Amazon would want to give you, but MacPorts is a > name with some pull, and Amazon has deep pockets. Couldn't hurt to ask? > > Cheers, > Andrew > > On 5/17/21 8:22 PM, Mark Anderson wrote: > > Yeah, I was thinking of the US as well, and I meant non-profit, which > doesn't have tax deductible donations but is assumed to not make money. The > problem is there is a lot of work around becoming a legal entity and > accepting donations or whatever. I honestly have no idea how much work > exactly - but certainly not zero. I have no idea how non-US entities work. > > —Mark > _______________________ > Mark E. Anderson <[email protected]> > MacPorts Trac WikiPage <https://trac.macports.org/wiki/mark> > GitHub Profile <https://github.com/markemer> > > > > On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 2:02 AM Ryan Schmidt <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On May 16, 2021, at 14:46, Mark Anderson wrote: >> >> > I keep wondering if we became like a not-for-profit If we could get >> someone like MacStadium or Amazon or something to donate server time to us. >> Or accept donations from Github sponsorship. I could look into what that >> would take, although it might be way more trouble than it's worth. I think >> my current corp lawyer knows non-profit law - I could bring it up next time >> I see them. >> >> MacStadium already donates the use of an Apple Silicon Mac mini to us. I >> am not aware of whether Amazon offers free persistent Mac servers with root >> access to open source projects. >> >> Accepting donations through GitHub Sponsors or any other means would, I >> suspect, require the formation of a legal entity for MacPorts, which would >> be the owner of the business bank account we would probably have to open. >> We've discussed becoming a legal entity a few times over the years but it >> hasn't been done. If we do it, my preference would be for MacPorts to be a >> U.S. entity, since I am in the U.S. and since MacPorts was started by Apple >> and is for the benefit of Apple users and Apple is a U.S. company. A >> different suggestion was that we should join an existing free software >> organization and leave all the legalities up to them, and funnel donations >> through them. I don't think that idea was supported by everyone so that >> didn't happen either. >> >> If we accepted donations, we would have to develop guidelines for how the >> donations could be spent. >> >> Being recognized as a not-for-profit is a whole 'nother can of worms. >> First one has to form a legal entity, then one has to apply to be >> recognized as a not-for-profit (which incurs additional fees) and make a >> case for why that should be, a process which can take years, and the answer >> to the application could be no. For example there was increased scrutiny of >> non-profit organization applications in the field of open source software >> in 2010; see https://opensource.org/node/840. That's what I recall from >> researching the process in the U.S. It may differ in other countries. >> >> >
