On 9/26/2012 12:12 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote: > Has someone formed a legal organization, and filed 501.c3 paperwork, > or not? What are the charitable goals? If they have, where do I send > a check for my $50 tax-deductible charitable contribution.
On the www.openafs.org site there is a "Donate" link which takes you to: http://static.usenix.org/about/openafs/ which describes how a 501c3 tax deductible donation can be made to the Usenix OpenAFS Fund. The page reads: [begin quote] USENIX is accepting donations on behalf of The OpenAFS Project through the OpenAFS Fund. Donations can be made by sending a check, drawn on a U.S. bank, made out to the USENIX Association, to: OpenAFS Fund USENIX Association 2560 Ninth St., Suite 215 Berkeley, CA 94710 Your contribution may be tax-deductible as allowed by law under IRS Code Section 501(c)(3). Check with your tax advisor to determine whether your contribution is fully or partially tax-deductible. [end quote] OpenAFS itself does not exist as a legal corporate entity. The OpenAFS Elders represent the community as an unincorporated association. There are significant legal and financial hurdles that must be addressed before an OpenAFS Foundation can be formed. Most open source projects do not have their own legal entity but work under an umbrella organization. OpenAFS is complicated because the IBM Public License 1.0 is unique and is in conflict with the requirements of many of the umbrella orgs. In addition, OpenAFS ships kernel drivers which increasingly require digital signatures and umbrella orgs are loath to be responsible for signing. In addition, the licensing of the source code itself is not as clean as one would like. Not to mention the trademark and protocol compatibility issues that IBM has never fully resolved. Finally, running an organization requires money. You need to pay for at least a part time executive director, accountants, lawyers and possibly insurance. Then there really should be funding for the gatekeepers, the system administration and web site management. All things which up to this point have been donated in kind but which have substantial costs. A bare bones Foundation that does not but maintain the status quo will cost a minimum of six figures and that does not begin to address the development of new features or functionality. Finally, any organization requires a business plan. When I wrote the plan for the MIT Kerberos Consortium the plan outlined seven years of budgets and goals along with fund raising targets, how contributors would benefit, and what the minimum financial commitments were for formation, etc. In 2008, the OpenAFS Elders and the community were working on a plan. The announcement of the plan was made on 6 May 2008. http://lists.openafs.org/pipermail/openafs-announce/2008/000242.html A follow up providing details was made on 24 Sept 2008: http://lists.openafs.org/pipermail/openafs-announce/2008/000259.html The details are available at http://www.openafs.org/foundation. After a year of work it was concluded that for a variety of reasons the plan to incorporate could not move forward. The reasoning was detailed in an e-mail sent on 18 Aug 2009: http://lists.openafs.org/pipermail/openafs-announce/2009/000303.html All of this information is publicly available. The OpenAFS Elders have continued to work with IBM on the trademark and other legal issues without coming to a resolution sufficient to meet our needs. Umbrella organizations such as the Software Freedom Conservancy have continued to discuss options with us but the legal issues are a significant challenge. The OpenAFS Elders continue to evaluate options for moving forward. In the meantime, if you would like to donate money, you can do so via the Usenix Fund. If you would like to donate code, you can do so via gerrit.openafs.org. Jeffrey Altman
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