I agree that the “formal incorporation” issue should be explored and
thought of seriously. But I also side with the so far stated opinion: I
don't think it would be in the project's best interest to be formally
incorporated.
gregor herrmann dijo [Sun, Mar 22, 2026 at 12:05:24AM +0100]:
Adding a bit to the "Lost in translation (and jurisdiction)" game:
foundation (en) ~ Stiftung (de) ~ fondation (fr)
association (fr) ~ Verein (de) ~ corporation under 501(c)(3) (en)
(And I guess these '~' are something between weak and wrong.)
Right. And I think we would have to add ~, ≈ or further for the different
jurisdictions across the world...
And it is one of the main points why I crossed at some point from
(mildly) advocating getting incorporated to prefering the status quo:
Because the benefits and liabilities have to be considered, and are not the
same wherever we choose to base upon.
Right now, for practical purposes, we _do_ exist. There are a couple of
organizations formally run by (some partially) DDs, and devoted partially
or wholly to supporting Debian already. Particularly, our relation with SPI
runs longer than the time I've been a part of the project (since 1997
AFAICT).
If we become a registered entity, it'd be a way more easy for
governments to get us accounted for. Even more in the case of a
USA-registered Foundation.
Luckily there are more jurisdictions than the US one to form an - ehm
- organisation :)
And I agree that I wouldn't be happy to see Debian as a US-based
organisation.
We cannot afford not having a presence where we receive most of our
donations (the USA and the EU). We always have to negotiate with a local
organization to receive local donations for DebConfs or miniDebConfs. But
given the case (i.e. that a specific legal framework makes it problematic
to have formal Debian presence in a given jurisdiction), we can “shy away”
from a given organization and “fall towards” the others. Of course, we
don't have _that_ much resilience. But having one single
organization... would make it a bit more complicated. Of course, there is a
lot I don't understand about legal issues, and I might be assuming
completely wrong things here.
OTOH, we could talk about _increasing_ the number of TOs — looking at the
trends for Debian activities and participation particularly in India and
Brazil, it could be worth putting some thought to having a formal presence
there.
