On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 12:43:42AM -0400, Stephen Wille Padnos wrote: > If we create a non-profit, there are massive IRS reporting > requirements. The entity would most likely need to hire an accountant. > (I believe there are quarterly reports, similar to 941 tax filings for
Must the entity be based in the US? If it were incorporated in some tax haven, then it may be sufficient to keep computer records intended for internal purposes. Government snoops could be given a copy, but they couldn't demand them on their forms. So long as the membership remains international, no one country can reasonably claim that the entity is nationally bound? Would the donations be large enough to make IRS investigation more than a farce? > Even with a non-profit, we're into a political arena. Who decides > what will be done, by whom, and at what price? Who decides who that > "decider" will be? There's a German saying: "Wessen Brot ich esse, dessen Lied ich singe." (Whose bread I eat, their song I sing.) If the donor specifies how his money is to be used to improve or support EMC2, then not only democracy and administrative efficiency are served, but the product is directed to serving its users. A donation pro-forma might offer multiple-choice options, such as "Improve GUI", "Fix open bugs", "Add a G?? hula-hoop", or "Free beer at NAMES". Free choice of allocation has to be available as well, doesn't it? It may be decided that five or ten percent should be reserved for representing EMC2 at symposia, if that's beneficial to the community. > Should it only be people who have donated? Yep, not only to avoid hostility toward a board, but also to leave US government snoops with better things to do. If the commercial decisions are made in Antarctica, Baluchistan, or wherever donations arrive from, then any US claim that "you're ours, so there!" becomes hard to justify. > Pro-rated based on donation size? Yep, along the lines of "Here's $xx for kitty yy, to help someone reallocate their time to fix my pet peeve." The rest of us can wait for traditional open-source unfunded development, or roll up our coder's (or documenter's) sleeves. > There is significant work that has already gone into EMC2 - should > some of the money allocated to one feature be given to the people who > made the foundation on which the new code rests? That could be another tick-box, for the donor to decide. > The only thing that would be unreasonable would be to expect that > people who do this in their spare time should change their priorities > based on what you want. The easiest way to fix that problem is to pay > someone, so they're no longer working on it in their spare time ;) That's what we do with hardware; choose whether to build or buy. :-) I deeply doubt that an increase in institutionalised bureaucracy leads to increased community happiness or effectiveness, somehow. Erik -- The universe is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering. -- Chinese proverb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
