Martin Ellison wrote:
Do check the legal situation. You may find that you need some kind of permit or registration if you are soliciting donations from the public. Also remember that Lumiera is an international project so you have cross-jurisdictional issues ie the laws of more than on e country to consider. Will Lumiera have a 'home' country? Will there be a 'Lumiera Foundation' (like the Blender Foundation or the Wikipedia Foundation)?
We prevent this burecracy by making donations on a personal/private base. Donations won't go to a 'project' or 'organization' but between private persons in most cases. Either as as personal gifts or worked out as contracts, whatever donor and reciever acknowlege. So far there will be no cash/fund going to the 'project', people can place promises on http://www.pipapo.org/pipawiki/Lumiera/Donations which are non binding. When they really acknowledge money or goods transfers this will generally be between the two persons directly involved, in most cases a private-private relationship. As far I know there are no laws which require to tax gifts or forbid recieving/asking for them, but I am not a lawyer.
For bounties which can be seen as a contract this might turn out that the reciever is taken as business person (depending on the legislation where he lives), it could even be that reciever has to tax it.
When the donor is some kind of business or organization then some laws might apply for that, but generally I assume that a business is free to spend its money for whatever it wants (still legislations may differ), as long it can account it in its books somehow.
Of course this gifts or bounties are not Tax deductible like a charity in no way.
So far we trying to make this a test and lets see if it even works. When it works with more success as expected, which means we get a lot of donation this way (well maybe after there will be a useable Lumiera, I don't really expect it now). Then we might care for setting up a charity or foundation. So far the project is growing and current donation won't justify all the work, time and money involved setting up such an organizational form.
Christian _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list Cinelerra@skolelinux.no https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra