Re: The future of my involvement with the Octave project

[John Swensen]

On Dec 10, 2008, at 2:54 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On 26-Oct-2008, address@hidden wrote:
>
> |   Now a silly question: will gifts made with the "funding" page of  
> Octave
> | (http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/funding.html) be affected to  
> Octave
> | development after Nov. 30th?
>
> Yes, you can still use the UW Foundation page.  The funds will go to
> an account of my former supervisor (who worked to secure nearly all
> the funding for my work on Octave for the last 16 years) and he said
> he will try to get the funding to me by way of some kind of consulting
> arrangement.  But I'm not sure whether the university will charge
> overhead on that, or what the rate would be if they do.  If it matters
> to anyone, I can inquire.
>
> I agree with others who posted in this thread that it might be good to
> set up some kind of Octave Foundation that could be used to catch
> donations.  With that we could do some things like public donor
> recognition that the UW Foundation would not allow us to do.
>
> I could also maybe make a PayPal tip jar available if people just
> wanted to throw money directly at me.  :-)
>
> jwe

I have spent an evening or two in the last month reading about 501(c) 
(3) nonprofit organizations and how they are formed.  This is the same  
structure under which the Mozilla Foundation, OSI, and many other open- 
source projects organized.  From what I have read, if someone is  
willing to do the legwork (and paperwork), a 501(c)(3) can be started  
for $300 (unless the first year profits/donataions exceed $10000, in  
which case it would be $750).  If someone doesn't have the time but  
has the funds, I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers out there who  
specialize in this stuff who could do it for a couple of hours of  
work.  I also wonder if there are other OpenSource foundations out  
there (e.g. FSF or OSI) that provide legal/accounting services to help  
start new 501(c)(3) foundations for open source projects.

In summary, there is a lot of up-front paperwork to get registered.   
Then, there are semi-annual board meetings that *must* be held and  
appropriate minutes, action items, etc. recorded.  Finally, there is a  
year end report that must be filed with the IRS.  All things  
considered, it seemed less daunting that I though it would be, but  
wanted to see what others thought concerning a nonprofit foundation  
for Octave.

Everything I learned was from the following book
http://books.google.com/books?id=bhiQaQ_lRNsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=How+to+form+a+nonoprofit+corporation

John Swensen