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Writing software, in and of itself, does no more to advance science than building houses does to advance structural engineering. If they are specifically writi
by stephencanon 12y ago
Writing software, in and of itself, does no more to advance science than building houses does to advance structural engineering.
If they are specifically writing software to be used for scientific research, or are carrying out significant research into computing and releasing papers/patents freely, then they might qualify.
- Karunamon 12y agoSo let's look at some of the existing ones like Wikimedia or Apache. What are they doing to claim that particular exemption?
- stephencanon 12y agoI expect that they aren't claiming a scientific purpose. More likely they claim to be educational, or that they provide a public work.
- lacksconfidence 12y agoat least in the case of wikimedia, software is merely a byproduct of their goal. To quote their main page: Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world.
- DougBTX 12y agoHere's Wikimedia's confirmation of exemption letter. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/9/90/501%28c%293_Letter.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/9/90/501%2... To go further, I'd look up exactly what "Public Charity Status 170(b)(1)(A)(vi)" is, and then compare that to how they describe themselves here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en
- kijin 12y agoIn a different thread a couple of days ago, someone mentioned that Apache got a scientific exemption. Which is not surprising at all, since the Apache HTTP Server had its roots in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), a scientific institution. Python Software Foundation also got a scientific and educational exemption.