Drupal foundation (was: [drupal-devel] adsense from google for drupal)

[Vladimir Zlatanov]

> 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