On 6/25/07, Darren.Reed at sun.com <Darren.Reed at sun.com> wrote: > I would be very much in favour of seeing OpenSolaris become a > 501(c)(3) entity. In fact, I think it is essential that OpenSoalris > does so, otherwise OpenSolaris is not exactly attractive for > people/companies to donate anything towards in the USA.
There's a *lot* of legwork involved with becoming a non-profit - be it a 501(c)3 like Apache or a 501(c)6 like Eclipse. To qualify as a public charity (only public charities will render tax advantages to individuals donating from the US), there'll be some long-term (~4 years out) minimums on who can financially back OpenSolaris (i.e. Sun - or any donor - would only be able to give a certain percentage of the funding after that date). Note that you have to be careful when a charity takes money for a particular purpose and turns around and give that to an individual for some purpose to try to avoid taxes by the original donor. You'd have to draft up some pretty clear conflict-of-interest and financial policies to keep the tax-man and other donors happy. (IOW, Mike can't donate money to a charity and tell the charity to pay Bob. The charity can ask Mike for the money and independently select Bob to receive it.) I'd be happy to talk more in depth if you'd like, but if you go this route, please do so with your eyes wide open. My hunch is that there isn't much benefit for OpenSolaris to go this route at its stage in its lifecycle. -- justin
