On Friday 24 of April 2020 20:03:50 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote: > This is a combined reply to Slavek, David and Michael :) > > None of these "for free" or "for little fee" platform/companies will > make [TDE-ORG] a legal entity. It's quite the contary: Now Tim is the > legal burdon-carrier. The moment TDE leaves his nest, it's on it's own. > In the worst case this is a fork - with possible the consequence of > loosing TDE as a trademark and name. Having mentioned trademark: in > Austria trademarks are quite cheep, I remember I payed € 250.- for 10 > years, but trademarks are given to legal entities, not projects. > > The moment [TDE-ORG] takes money, it needs to be a legal entity. Again, > now it's Tim. If [TDE-ORG] wants to move away from busfactor=1 to e.g. > busfactor=6, then 6 people will need to form a legal entity. Where that > entity is located is essential in almost any sense: copyright, legal > satatus, tax, domain, ... > > I strongly suggest that everybody tries to figure out his/her countries > legal situation concerning NGOs/association and the like. EU is not that > unified as it might appear. There is a list of must-haves: > > - VAT exemption, aka 0% VAT rate. > - no tax requirement if income (in minus out) is lower € XXX (which > happens to be ~ 5500.- in Austria) - simple bookkeeping requirements > (in, out) > - who is allowed to be board member (Austria: everybody AFAIK) > > ANd stay away from US legislation :) > > Nik > Hi Nik, all, I dare to disagree with a number of opinions. Tim founded the project, Tim was its leader, Tim agreed to hand over the role of project leader. As far as I know, there is no registered trademark for which Tim would be its holder. Therefore, I believe that there is no reason to claim that only Tim is the legal holder for project. Tim, as an ordinary natural person, handed over the role of project leader, so I don't find a reason to call it a fork. Similar to your opinion that only Tim is legal to accept donations. Tim is only a natural person and so far he accepts donations as a natural person on some of his account. He is not an organization. He is the founder of the project. A project for which other natural persons have taken responsibility for its continuation. I do not agree that the only way for a TDE project to accept donations and manage funds is to create our own organization. Obviously, there are at least two possible variants: 1. Create our own organization and take responsibility for all legal matters relating to the status of the organization. 2. Leave the project as a team and use a fiscal host. This is the same principle as projects associated with organizations such as the Freedom Software Conservancy, the Apache Foundation, the Linux Foundation and also Open Collective. As I see in the comments from others involved in the discussion, for the creation of our own organization, some claim that it is quite simple, others claim that there are many problem points - the choice of continent, country, state, legislation,... so a lot of problems. Do you really want to deal with that? In addition, do you really want to deal with the fact that it will then be necessary to monitor changes in the legislation of a selected country so that the organization does not neglect any new regulations of the law? Who would want to do that? Because it is important for us to work on a project and not to deal with legal matters, bookkeeping, and so on, the option with a fiscal host seems to me to be definitely more advantageous. Cheers -- Slávek
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