3 ms·
I wish you were wrong. I just looked this up out of curiousity, and Gnome themselves had their charity status denied by the IRS for this reason- > You have a s
by tedivm 5y ago
I wish you were wrong. I just looked this up out of curiousity, and Gnome themselves had their charity status denied by the IRS for this reason-
> You have a substantial nonexempt purpose because you develop software published under open source compatible licenses that authorize use by any person for any purpose, including nonexempt purposes such as commercial, recreational, or personal purposes, including campaign intervention and lobbying.
> Mere publishing under open source licenses for all to use does not show that the poor and underprivileged actually use the Tools. ? You do not limit your distribution and do not know who uses the Tools much less if they use them for artistic purposes. ? you do not know who uses the Tools much less what kind of content they create with the Tools.
That said it should be clear here that this was explicitly for a charity, not just a non profit, but even still it's pretty messed up.
- throwaway82652 5y agoI don't think it's that messed up. If you really want to make something that qualifies as a charity (or a for-profit business) then you can just do that separately. The existence of this foundation doesn't get in the way, they're a home for the trademarks and a few other things but otherwise they don't have much bearing on what you would do. But there are some people at the foundation who would make it their goal to hire more developers, if the funding was there, it currently isn't.
- nerdponx 5y agoThat reasoning is like denying charity status to a church thrift store because they don't do income verification at the door, to ensure that only poor customers are allowed to shop there.
- throwaway82652 5y agoNo, it's not even close to that. Analogies aren't that good of a tool to use here.
- yencabulator 5y agoUhh, the Linux Foundation is a non-profit that sponsors people to work on Linux the kernel. How's that possible then?
- throwaway82652 5y agoThat's an extremely small percentage, most Linux developers aren't sponsored by the Linux Foundation. The majority of their expenses go towards events and training.
- yencabulator 5y agoSo you're saying it's a question of the threshold of "substantial". Okay, I can believe that.
- throwaway82652 5y agoNot really, the question is how the organization is classified. Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) so they can sponsor some people but it's only for the purposes of furthering "common business interests" and not for profit.