A 501(c)(3) is a non-profit organization that exists to serve the public good. A 501(c)(6) is a non-profit organization that exists to serve its membership. S

A 501(c)(3) is a non-profit organization that exists to serve the public good. A 501(c)(6) is a non-profit organization that exists to serve its membership. So like a bunch of businesses in a city get together to form an organization that works for their common good. The business organization doesn't make a profit, each individual business makes a profit and pays their taxes. A 501(c)(3) has a lot more restrictions than a 501(c)(6), so you might wonder why a 501(c)(6) would want to be organized as a 501(c)(3). Well, that's because donations to a 501(c)(3) are tax deductible and donations to a 501(c)(6) are not. So basically, tax avoidance by the people contributing to the organization. If those same people are the ones that created/run the organization, you might even claim that it is criminal tax fraud (I am not making that claim - I don't know enough about the ASF to have an opinion). But keep in mind that the amount of money that ASF brings in and/or spends each year is basically nothing compared to what WikiMedia or Mozilla deals with. I'm not sure that these corporations would go to the effort for such a tiny amount of money. Maybe it started out with good intentions, and has slowly evolved to be worthless from a public good standpoint.