Am 08/14/2011 08:01 AM, schrieb Raphael Bircher:
Am 14.08.11 03:58, schrieb Rob Weir:
On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Eike Rathke<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Rob,
On Saturday, 2011-08-13 10:51:57 -0400, Rob Weir wrote:
Donations went to Team OpenOffice.org, e.V, or to SPI (for US
donations). I'm assuming that Oracle does not control either of these
accounts. I'm assuming as well that Apache and the PPMC has no
control over these accounts.
For Team OOo that's correct. For SPI that's presumably correct as well.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think an Apache
project can have a private fund, or solicit donations for a 3rd party
one.
Why not?
I've formed a US-based non-profit corporation before, so I know some
of the concerns. To preserve tax-exempt status, as well as to comply
with fund raising regulations, you need to be very careful how
donations are solicited and how they are spent. There is a lot of
paperwork and a lot of details. I have no experience with doing this
internationally, but that certainly increases the complexity. It is
very reasonable for Apache not to assume the risks to their non-profit
status that would come if they allowed every poding or even project to
do its own fund raising.
I assume that a donnation to the ASF is only tax-free in the US. Every
Country has here there oven criteria. That's the reason why Wikipedia
has NGO's in each Country. It means, donnation to the ASF will not be
Tax-Free in Switzerland.
Maybe have it point to here instead:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html#Paypal
I think a donation to Apache in general is different from a donation
specifically to the AOOo project. I didn't see a "designated use" field
in the PayPal form.
Correct. Projects are not independent legal entities. The legal
entity is the Apache Software Foundation. But the website does say,
"If you have a specific target or project that you wish to directly
support, please contact us and we will do our best to satisfy your
wishes". But that is different than saying that a project has a fund
under their control.
Yes, and that's exactly the problem why no one is willing to give money.
Peopel like to know where where there money go,
I doubt that. When it's clear that the money cannot go directly to the
AOO project, then it's for the entire ASF *including* AOO.
The problem of giving money (from the average human) is the fact that
you have a) less in your wallet, b) you don't see or get a short-term
effect; like a bugfix or a new release with your preferred language.
else they can affort a Lisence of MS Office.
This is not true and pure rant.
Marcus
Higher level question is this: is there any particular reason that we
think AOOo has fundraising needs that are not covered by Apache's
fundraising? Apache provides the servers, the domain registrations,
they have conferences which we are welcome to attend, they have a
press office, etc.
Team OOo paid bursaries for individuals that went to OOoCons and
Hackfest, paid hardware for buildbots and pootle servers, paid students
for the OOo internship. Do you think that Apache will cover those
expenses?
Apache provides the hardware. They also have travel assistance for
ApacheCon. It is probably premature to talk about the next OOoCon.
I'm not aware of any internship sponsorship, but Apache does
participate in GSoC:
http://community.apache.org/gsoc.html
Eike
