1 Mar
2005
1 Mar
'05
2:58 p.m.
> Joining SPI would basically enable us to collect tax deductible > donations from US citizens. Nothing more and nothing less. There is a > similar organisation in .de but due to German tax laws they cannot > _guarantee_ that we will get the money that people send to them on our > behalf. I suspect that they say this to cover their legal behind, but... > Also, this would only be applicable to people paying taxes in .de. Tax deductions are good, but not the only thing which matters. Things that matter IMHO are: * fund management - what restrictions/conditions they might put on how the money are spent - for example do they frown on bounties * legal matters - what if company X, seeing drupal as competitor launches some bizzare lawsuit, for example patent infringement in US. Call me paranoid, if you like, but that is quite a viable business strategy with quite a few Sun Tsu reading vulture, sorry venture, capitalists and CEOs. * promotion/marketing - what an organisation can do to benefit drupal, this is important for the long term future * help get a voice in/place or influence standards bodies like oasis, w3c, ... > Apparently there is no organisation that can accept tax deductible > donations from all countries within the EU because tax collecting isn't > centralized in the EU. Quite possible. Tax is down to individual governments, so tax benefits probably is not the most important feature of such a foundation. Unless of course somebody decides to create "Drupal Foundation International", with local branches, registered as charities in each possible country - that is a step towards world domination :) On a serious note, some form of organisation would help the project. When - I wouldn't know. That depends on too many factors, we might need to learn a lot from the others - mozilla, SPI, typo3, apache, name your favourite. To team with SPI or others or not - that is secondary to answering the question what is it for - see above. Cheers, Vlado