FW: Starting a non-profit ?

[Larry Masinter]

For those interested…. the Petit “New Foundations of Open Source” article was useful

for me, but I’m seeing why nolo press isn’t enough.

 

Plan B is to find some other academic / museum context to host the additional work,

supposing our project goals are consistent with their ongoing work (CHM, Software

Preservation Network, LFG foundation? University with related research efforts,

(not part of SPN?)

 

 

 

From: Barbara Rhomberg <brho...@krnonprofitlaw.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2021 10:36 AM
To: Larry Masinter <L...@acm.org>
Subject: RE: Starting a non-profit ?

 

Larry,

 

The IRS takes the position the providing open source software free to the public is not a 501(c)(3) purpose.  An organization must also have educational or charitable activities to be exempt.  See this brief write up from Wilson Sonsini:   https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/trending-in-tech-tax-exempt-vehicles-3429472/.

 

To be honest, I don’t have the bandwidth right now to help you figure out if a nonprofit corporation makes sense and would qualify for any exempt status.  Stephanie Petit at Adler & Colvin has written an article on this topic (https://www.adlercolvin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/The-New-Foundations-of-Open-Source-00922523xA3536.pdf) and I suggest you reach out to her.  https://www.adlercolvin.com/stephanie-l-petit/

 

 

Barbara Rhomberg

Kavanagh Rhomberg LLP

1025 Alameda de las Pulgas #123

Belmont, CA 94002

BRho...@KRnonprofitlaw.com

(650) 539-4945

 

The information in this e-mail message and any attachments may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure.  If you think that you have received this e-mail message in error, please e-mail the sender at brho...@KRnonprofitlaw.com, and delete all copies of this message and its attachments, if any.  Thank you.

 

 

 

From: Larry Masinter <masi...@gmail.com> On Behalf Of Larry Masinter
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2021 2:05 PM
To: Barbara Rhomberg <brho...@krnonprofitlaw.com>
Subject: Starting a non-profit ?

 

I and some colleagues have been working on a project to revive some software as a historical artifact.

We’ve reached a point where we’d like to hire some helpers for various subprojects, accept donations.

I’ve been looking into incorporating a 501c3, also to hold the copyright of our work (and license it freely).

 

Could I schedule a consultation?

 

 

--

https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

 

[John Cowan]

I've had dealings with Software in the Public Interest (spi-inc.org), which is a not-for-profit whose purpose is to serve as a corporate umbrella for free and open-source software.  I found them very helpful in laying out what they can and can't do for software projects.  One thing they definitely can do is accept targeted donations, which then can be disbursed on the request of the Liaison, the person who represents the project to SPI.  They can also hold copyrights for us. Among their projects are Debian, LibreOffice, MinGW (gcc for Windows), and PostgreSQL.

Do we have a licensing story currently?  Who is the actual copyright owner?

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