Thanks, Fred. Your thinking makes sense. But I am a geek wannabe, not a lawyer. My advice is just to get good advice.
Regards -- Bhaskar On 05/07/2009 11:07 AM, fred trotter wrote: > One of the primary purposes of LibertyMSF will be to work on orphan > projects like written documentation or code documentation, and we want > to be able to apply for grants and such. We also want to be able to > accept donations directly from individuals. For this reason we will be > going 501c3 > > The Health IT Public Utility Act of 2009 is unique because I had > honestly thought that direct 'lobbying' (as in trying to influence the > passing of legislation) would be outside our mission statement. > However, 501c3 can do limited lobbying and the kinds of lobbying that > we plan to do for this bill and bills like it are essentially > costless, and well within the limitations of what a 501c3 is allowed > to do. (IANAL etc etc) > > There will so rarely be an actual 'bill' that comes up, that I do not > think we will spend much time on this. I hope that LibertyMSF will > become more regularly involved in policy papers rather than directly > active on legislation. > > As for a trade association, (or 501c6) it is my limited understanding > that they have to survive on the dues of its members. The problem with > that is that any organization that hopes to represent our community > must reconcile the fact that what is in the companies best interests > is not always the same thing as the interests of the individuals in > the community. If LibertyMSF were limited to representing just > corporate members, we would eventually become beholden to only 50% of > the relevant interests. Again, the proprietary EHR industry has the > glut of funds needed to run several different organizations, our > community simply does not. For this reason we will be following the > 'patron' model that the Free Software Foundation uses. > > Of course, as we move forward we are open to changing course on issues > like this, but for now, I wanted to explain our initial thinking. Does > this make sense? > > -FT _____________ The information contained in this message is proprietary and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please: (i) delete the message and all copies; (ii) do not disclose, distribute or use the message in any manner; and (iii) notify the sender immediately. In addition, please be aware that any message addressed to our domain is subject to archiving and review by persons other than the intended recipient. Thank you. _____________
