On 10/15/2012 12:00 PM, Harri Pitkänen wrote:
On Sunday 14 October 2012, Marc Paré wrote:
Maybe if we just added a "Not applicable in Finland" or something to the
effect that the donation process is not for Finland.
I wonder if just a simple sentence just as this would be enough?
I think it would be enough but I'm not a lawyer so I don't know for sure.
What
are other large projects doing?
I posted this question to the cross-project mailing list of Finnish free
software localizers. So far nobody has admitted translating any donation
links. One participant managed to get a lawyer's opinion on the matter and
according to the lawyer it seems likely that distributing the donation link is
indeed illegal in Finland (without a permit).
This is what I managed to find by myself:
Firefox:
- No donation links in the software package, no donation links on translated
Finnish web pages.
Apache OOo:
- There is an English donation link on the Finnish web page as a part of the
standard site footer (not done by the Finnish localizer). I don't think
there are donation links in the software package?
debian.org:
- Finnish web site contains a request to donate "hardware or services". This
is legal here, the restrictions only apply to direct monetary donations.
ubuntu-fi.org
- No donation links that I could find. I don't know what plans the
localizers have for the upcoming releases where there might be donation
links within the software.
Wikipedia:
- Has translated donation form in Finnish. But the project is also
incorporated in Finland as a registered non-profit so they could
have the required permit. Nothing in their financial report suggests that
they have it though.
Anyway it is important to know that people in Finland are free to donate to
the TDF if the want (and manage to find out how from the international
website). The only thing that is forbidden is to ask them to donate. So there
is no need to exclude anyone from the donation form, we just need to avoid any
links or suggestions to do so in any material that is distributed in Finland.
Harri
Wow
I wonder why there is a problem with direct donations in Finland.
For New York State, in the USA, there are a lot of regulations on how to
raise funds by a non-profit, not-for-profit, and other organizations
that are not "for-profit".
The problem is in how your "chartered" you organization in the State.
If you chartered it one way, you can ask for money in a certain type of
fundraiser, but if you chartered it in a different way, you cannot do
that type of fundraiser. I know of a local group that got fined 120% of
what they raised in a fundraiser type they were not chartered for.
SO, maybe Finland's laws require a permit process to make sure the
donations are going to the organization you claim it is going to. I
wonder how much the permit costs and how often it needs to be refiled?
Does anyone know of any other countries, or local areas, that restrict
direct donations to an organization like TDF. As far as I can tell,
there is not issues in NYS-USA.
I wonder if there are any regulations for using a credit/debit card to
donate, vs. using PAypal taking the payment from a checking account.
There are laws in the USA that forbid credit/debit cards to pay out any
charges to different types of "web based businesses", one big one are
gambling sites. It is illegal to host them in the USA and when they
moved out-country, the laws were created to stop payments to any
gamboling sites world-wide. There are other type of web-based payments
that are not allowed for a person in the USA, but it has been a few
years since I read the article.
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