Starting a new thread from a discussion at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/Jot2ydQjIhk/ZF16lHUzAQAJ
2015-09-17 16:45:53 UTC+2, William:
On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 7:34 AM, kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > it would be useful to revive the discussion of a
> > true SageMath Foundation, separate from SMCI of course, whether
> incorporated
> > in the US or Europe (or elsewhere), but it sounds like there wasn't
> > currently enough interest in helping with the substantial paperwork
> involved
> > in this as of yet. But if this existed it might help support some of
> the
> > other Sage infrastructure needs, beyond the *.math.washington.edu
> resources
> > this thread was supposed to be about :)
>
> Such a foundation isn't going to happen any time soon, at least not
> with me the one doing it. I talked extensively with a partner at
> Fenwick & West, and was advised that it is currently basically
> impossible for an "Open Source Software Not for profit" to get 501c3
> status these days in the US. The IRS used to look favorably on such
> things a few years ago (e.g., Mozilla!), but now looks very
> unfavorably on open source as being "not for profit" (things that are
> political can change dramatically from one point in time to another).
> I didn't believe this could be the case, but the Fenwick & West partner is
> a top expert who is very familiar with what is going on, and she
> repeatedly clarified that it is. She suggested starting a 501c3 that
> has nothing to do with Sage, and also doesn't have the word "Sage" in
> its title
> would be the only reasonable strategy... and maybe later it would get
> involved with supporting Sage. Even doing that, the work
> involved is more than starting a company, and the rules are tricky
> involving taxes, so I definitely don't have the time to do that now.
>
> For all it's cons, University of Washington does at least administer
> the "Sage Foundation" budget very professionally, they don't charge
> anything in overhead (absolutely 100% of donations are spent on sage
> activities with no cut at all), and they take care of all the
> dispersement of funds to people (e.g., participants of "Women in Sage"
> Sage days -- often funded from this, bits of hardware we need for a
> conference, etc.). One drawback is their stupid "please donate
> again" mailing list.
>
> - William
>
On the USA side of things, the NumFOCUS Foundation
http://numfocus.org/
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/numfocus
seems to support quite a number of open-source science projects
http://numfocus.org/projects/
and it might be worth investigating the possibility for SageMath
to become one of their "fiscally sponsored projects" or of their
"other supported projects".
Samuel
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