On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 21:46:20 -0500 Michael <mb_trinity_desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wednesday 22 April 2020 07:46:27 pm David C. Rankin wrote: > > I haven't checked if TDE has any formal organization behind it that was > > created in the past few years, but if not, doing a quick non-profit may > > make sense. > > Probably the best way with Tim 'owning' the non-profit. In theory, we should probably incorporate, but this introduces accounting and tax-reporting requirements we haven't had to deal with up to this point. Still, we should move away from any single person being solely responsible for managing funds and resources—that's why we have a problem in the first place. > But, non-profit's rules are fairly odd/strict when it comes to making money. > AFAIR non-profits can't easily sell stuff, so the non-profit itself making > and selling t-shirts is probably a no-go. Not that there aren't ways around > that (usually something like a commercial entity donates % of profits per > sale of non-profit's licensed product). > > I’ve dealt with a bumper sticker place in Austin before that did the above, > once this gets worked out I wouldn't mind contacting them to see if they > still do that. One thing that has to be worked through if we set up a not-for-profit is *where* to do it. While a lot of TDE's users are American, a lot of the developers seem to be European (judging from email addresses and style of English usage). There are likely to be advantages and disadvantages to setting up in each jurisdiction. And the US is not a single jurisdiction: each state is different. Selling TDE swag in return for funds could be fine in many places. That's one of the things we'd need to find out. (Also, "not-for-profit" != "charity"—the latter have stricter rules to follow, but TDE would not be one.) So, what would the money the Trinity Desktop Environment Project, Inc. acquires be paid out for? -hosting -having someone do the accounting and make required corporate reports -publicity and outreach? -salary for one or more full-time devs, if we were to grow that much? -other? And sources of income would be . . . -donations -sales of swag (shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, mouse pads . . .) -technical support of TDE in larger deployments, à la Red Hat? -paid feature requests? And the next step would be research of the rules governing not-for-profits in the jurisdictions of people actually willing to do the *work* associated with setting up such a corporation (filing documents, paying fees, maybe an hour or two with a lawyer if necessary). I found the government how-to handbook for my jurisdiction with a single search on duckduckgo. Not all governments have this information on-line, but many should have. E. Liddell --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: trinity-users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: trinity-users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Read list messages on the web archive: http://trinity-users.pearsoncomputing.net/ Please remember not to top-post: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/mailing_lists/#top-posting
