Thanks André, I recall some explanation for the complexities of this around the establishment of The Document Foundation as a foundation, but I was not so sure of the specific situation with regard to Team OpenOffice.org e.V.
Also, because I went into that so much, I want to make it clear that I have no objection to however Team OpenOffice.org e.V. is constituted, merely to the fact that folks were making assumptions without knowing the facts of the matter. I think the larger issues are 1. How the Apache-hosted OpenOffice.org web site will provide information for folks interested in making donations, and how, if third-party groups are linked to, how that is with no liability on the part of the ASF and that it will be non-exclusive and without favor. 2. The extent to which organizations that offer to apply donations in support of the broad OpenOffice community can rely on the marks associated with [Apache] OpenOffice.org without implying a relationship to ASF and the Apache OpenOffice.org project that does not in fact exist. I am hopeful that the discussion here will lead us to an arrangement that works well for all parties. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: André Schnabel [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 10:44 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Making donations to the project Hi, Am 19.10.2011 18:52, schrieb Dennis E. Hamilton: > Considering the prominence being given to Team OpenOffice.org in some of these > conversations: > > It appears (according to that font of knowledge, Wikipedia) that an e.V in > Germany is somehow comparable to an LLC or LLP in the US and elsewhere. It > can be for a profit-making or non-profit activity. Whether non-profits are > necessarily charities in Germany is not clear to me either. not sure, if these terms can be translated 1:1. "Non-profit" in the sense that you do not want to make profit can be defined in the statutes. This is the case for TeamOO (not sure if the statutes I'm reading are current). To be approved as charity you need to follow some additional rules (what mainly means you need to work in one or more fields that are accepted as charitable by German law). This needs to be approved by the tax office (because donations to charities are tax deductible). This was not the case for TeamOO. I would even say for good reasons, as it may be quite complicated for a German charity to spent money for a global project. Neither the non-profit nor the charity status imply that you need to publish your budget or other internals. German associations are only liable to their members (and the tax office ;) ). All this is just from my experience at OOoDeV/FrODeV - ianal. regards, André
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