Ask Slashdot: How To Get Open Source Projects To Take Our Money? 301
New submitter wkaan writes "Last financial year, we had an underspend at work, and it was suggested and agreed that we should give some cash away — $20k to be exact — to open source projects. Four projects were selected. A management catch was that it could not appear to be a donation and it had to be for something we had notionally received in the current financial year. At that time it was early June, our financial year finishes at the end of June. The four projects were emailed using the most relevant looking contact address on their website. Often this was 'Finance' or 'Donations' contact. What do you know, none of the projects that were contacted could work out a way to accept our money. We were unable to give a cent of the twenty grand away, not even a cent. All somebody needed to do was invoice us for something (perhaps 'support' or whatever) and they'd have received $5000. Of the projects contacted, two never replied to our mail — perhaps they thought it a scam? The other two contacted couldn't work out what to invoice and just went away. Is open source too rich to need the money? Have you got a funny donation story? Better still, do you have a way this can be streamlined when we have our next underspend? The goal was not to have a funny (sad) story, but to support the projects that support our business." For those of you with open source projects for which would you would like to take donations but sometimes cannot, what complications get in the way?
$20,000 hammer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:5, Informative)
From you:
!" I won't even bother digging back through years and years of older postings; the answer is always the same ... SUPPORT. They pay you to support your program. You know, with technicians, and bug fixes, and the expertise to solve break/fix issues.
From TFS:
All somebody needed to do was invoice us for something (perhaps 'support' or whatever) and they'd have received $5000.
So, I shall leave the last quote from you:
It's depressing how Slashdot has rapidly descended...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
FFS, at least read TFS! This wasn't a "how do I make money doing open source" story at all. This was an "out of the blue, someone wants to give me money for my open source project, wat do?" story.
Re: (Score:2)
But the REAL answer here is to tell the company trying to ditch $20,000 to suck it up and just pay their own damn taxes rather than illegally attempting to avoid it. (For the record, even attempting to avoid taxes is illegal...)
This makes zero sense in the context of TFS,
A management catch was that it could not appear to be a donation and it had to be for something we had notionally received in the current financial year.
If they wanted to make donations to "dodge" taxes (it isn't a dodge if it's written into the tax code), they'd just make a $20k donation. This is most likely a department in a large company worried that if they don't spend their entire budget, they'll have a smaller budget next year.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not about illegally avoiding taxes, it's about spending earmarked money for an unauthorived purpose and doing it so that accounting is unaware of the transaction that is probably embesselment.
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:5, Interesting)
It also sounds very suspicious and skeevy. I wouldn't have taken the money either. If someone called me up out of the blue and offered me thousands of $ on my OSS project, asking for some vague (and possibly fraudulent) invoice in return, and telling me they were on a strict deadline and needed it fast--my first inclination would be to ask them if they're a Nigerian prince. I would assume either:
a) scam/fraud
b) money-laundering scheme
c) IRS sting
And then I would have said "Thanks, but no thanks" and hung up the phone.
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod this up to 6! With a dozen scams appearing in people's inboxes every day, all with some sort of odd story about why things must be done in something other than the most natural way, this story about short deadlines (a classic element of a scam to keep the mark from thinking on it too long) and some bogus invoice for something (anything at all, really! Trust us it's fine!) sounds a lot like a scam.
It's sad that all the scams out there make things this way.
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:5, Informative)
All of the answers here seem to be coming from people who have never worked (or don't understand) how the commercial world works and are saying "scam" "fraud" and accusing you of all sorts of nonsense. They are full of it, ignore them.
I get it - your department has a budget for software. Your budget is annual, and at the end of the year, you realized you hadn't spent your entire budget. Someone goes, "hey, let's support open source - we use it!". You then try to find open source to support, and pick four projects, and have zero success getting people to take the money. You have to get them to take it quickly, because if you don't spend the money by the end of your accounting year, it is gone. This is totally normal.
I think the issue is, (a) the people who work on open source sometimes don't understand how businesses work and (b) they are (like everyone should be) tuned into the fact that there are scams out there and things that sound too good to be true sometimes are. But at the end of the day, all you want is a receipt from them saying "we took your money", because otherwise your company will think you created a shell company and paid yourself. You don't care if it is a donation - you don't want the tax credit - you just need a receipt to satisfy your corporate anti-fraud processes. There is no fraud in paying someone for having done something in the past, i.e. having written open source software.
My suggestions, having never done this - you need actual human contacts set up in advance who believe your story. They need to understand how businesses work (it sounds stupid to people outside of large companies that budgets go away if you don't spend them, but unfortunately the world does work that way regardless of whether it sounds stupid). Maybe posting to a mailing list / support forum, instead of trying to email individuals, would get your more traction. You literally just need one prominent developer on the project to take the money - it doesn't have to be the "project", which may not even exist as a traditional legal entity. They will have to pay taxes on the money as income, which isn't a scam, but it also isn't your problem if you are paying them, it's theirs (legally).
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:5, Informative)
My suggestions, having never done this - you need actual human contacts set up in advance who believe your story.
No, more important is being honest. Asking for a receipt that isn't honest is trying to push your corporate shady ethics off on an OS developer. It's not much different than going to bar for a "business meeting" and buying rounds until everyone is sloshed, and then asking the bar for a receipt that says you bought dinner because your corporate policy won't reimburse for liquor.
If they'd asked for a receipt that said "donation" instead of "services rendered: support", the chances are better the offer wouldn't have been viewed as a scam. As it was, it was a scam -- scamming the company auditors into thinking an expense was a valid expense and not a voluntary handout. From the description of the issue ("an underspend") it sounds like there was a contract from an outside party that still had money left over, and instead of saying "it didn't cost us the full amount to do the work for you, you don't have to pay it all", they decided to pad the expenses with a few donations. We don't know for sure, but that's the impression I get.
They need to understand how businesses work (it sounds stupid to people outside of large companies that budgets go away if you don't spend them,
I think most of them understand how business works, know that asking for a phony receipt is unethical, and know that accepting a large cash donation from a corporate vendor will create tax implications that they may not want to deal with. Every year I have to deal with a self-employment schedule C (IIRC) that I'd rather not have to deal with, all because some money I make comes in as royalties instead of in my normal paycheck. It makes my taxes much more complicated than I'd like them to be. Especially if you're talking about a group of developers and expecting one of them to accept the money (and tax liability) for money that they'll all benefit from. I mean, you only need to be paying a 10% tax rate and have ten developers to share the donation for it to be a loss for whoever accepts the money.
You worked at Enron or something? (Score:3)
...because I cannot figure any other reason you would thing such a practice is "ttotally normal". It does happen, it is on the fuzzy legal line where it probably wouldn't result in legal trouble yes. However, this is FAR from "totally normal".
The spending pattern you talk about *IS* a common situation, though in my experience it is mostly what happens in public institutions or perhaps a few of the largest of corporations in departments that are "revenue sinks" rather than "revenue generators". That is be
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine if you receipt at the grocery store listed the total of all 20 things you bought, then divided them evenly between all 20 items so your milk is $2.94, your bread is $2.94, your lettuce is $2.94, your apples are $2.94, and so on, I'm sure that a lot of people wouldn't even look. A few might raise hell over the numbers.
That's pretty close to what really happens. Some decades back, when the first stories started to appear about the $1000 hammer or $5000 power cord or whatever, there were also occasional stories from people familiar with the accounting practices who explained the bogosity of the calculations. Of course, people just ignored this, and repeated the stories as evidence of administrative (usually government) idiocy.
The basis of it all generally turned out to be the fact that many organizations (especially government) explicitly list an "administrative fee" on their invoices when purchased through the usual purchasing department. This is typically a fixed percentage of the bottom-line price. People would simply divide this charge by the number of items, to get the per-item administrative fee, and add it to an item's price to get the item's "cost".
Thus, it's common to have separate power cords, due to the different plugs needed in different parts of the world, So you might have an order for a computer (10,000), plus a cord that fits your wall outlets ($10), for a total of $10,010. If the administrative fee is 10%, the total charged your department is $11,011. You critics will then list the charge for each item as $1,001 / 2, or $500.50, so your price for the computer is $10,500.50, and the price of the cord is $510.50.
That's a pretty expensive power cord, right?
Not that we should expect any such accountant's explanation to have any effect on the situation. That would take all the fun out of reporting on bureaucratic idiocies (that our political opponents support, of course).
And there might well be $500 power cords. They might include things like a transformer that adapts to a wide variety of line voltages, generate AC output of a different frequency than the input, or have a storage battery to get through short power fluctuations, etc. But that's a different explanation, with different ways of misleading your readers or listeners.
Bureaucratic idiocies are real. (Score:5, Insightful)
Last financial year, we had an underspend at work, and it was suggested...
Let me guess: this person works for the federal government.
Bureaucratic idiocies are real. When I worked for the federal government, our unit's financial controller sent out an annual email soliciting ideas for how to spend the underspend.
"Sent it back to Washington, so the Treasury can borrow marginally less money from China et.al." was never an option, because doing so would cause the unit's budget in the next fiscal year to be cut.
A better strategy, that might actually result in sub-trillion-dollar deficits, would be to reward government entities that don't spend their entire budget. Tell the financial controllers to send 99% of the "underspend" back to Washington, and personally pocket the other 1%. Suddenly you will see massive underspends appearing all over the place!
Re: (Score:3)
A better strategy, that might actually result in sub-trillion-dollar deficits, would be to reward government entities that don't spend their entire budget. Tell the financial controllers to send 99% of the "underspend" back to Washington, and personally pocket the other 1%. Suddenly you will see massive underspends appearing all over the place!
No. You'd see people gaming the system to get the maximum budget (over what they need) so they could have the most unspent. These sorts of "obvious" solutions are almost always ridiculous if you put in a little thought.
Re:$20,000 hammer (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally off topic. If you could find a 'Black Mamba' audiophile (idiot) power cord for $500 it would be a screaming bargain.
But they would sell less of them. People that pay $2K for a power cord want to pay more, so it's better.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually in the case of the toilet seat and hammer examples they were both engineered one-off pieces that had to be carefully designed to meet specific weight and size requirements. Which is to say if you ever make one or two of anything the per-unit cost is astronomical.
Try actually donating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your company seems to have a problem understanding what 'donate' means.
Re: (Score:3)
Look beyond the obvious. It's hard, I know, but you'll learn how the world really works.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is that being setup to do what the company was asking can take a lot of work. A group of developers working together to push out a project is a simple thing to organize. As soon as you start turning it into a business, you need to incorporate or form some other legal entity and that usually involves lawyers and such. Going through all that hassle for a 1-off contribution is probably not worth it.
When contacting the organization failed, the company should have contacted the individual developers
Income Tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Look beyond the obvious. It's hard, I know, but you'll learn how the world really works.
Sound advice because in the real world there is something called "income tax" and if you submit an invoice saying that you provided support and in return someone gives you money for that "support" something called the government may want to have some cut of it. Of course there are ways around this, for example you might set yourself up as a non-profit organization [slashdot.org]...err or perhaps not. One thing is for certain though that invoice is likely to cause a huge pile of paperwork and require the project to spend time reading and understanding obfuscated tax laws at which point they will probably question whether they would rather skip the money and spend the time reading and understanding obfuscated code instead.
Re:Income Tax (Score:4, Insightful)
I posed this question to my wife, who actually worked as the bookkeeper for a non-profit for a number of years. Her answer was, "There are laws against that." So yeah, I don't blame the OSS projects for not taking the money. Besides, it just sounds dodgy. Even if I was convinced it's not a scam, at best it's dishonest. At worst it's criminal fraud that will end up costing a lot more than $20k in lawyer fees.
Re:Income Tax (Score:4, Informative)
Just like Warren Buffet says (paraphrased), just because you'll have to pay tax on it, doesn't make anyone stop trying to earn an extra dollar.... except apparently you.
But paying tax so you can earn nothing more is often a reason not to earn more.
Some company with a few extra bucks wants to "donate" money to you in exchange for "services". Since you weren't before, you now need to become a business and start paying self-employment taxes. And taxes on income. To the state, to the feds, and maybe to your local city. You need to spend the time on the paperwork, and sometimes a mid-year surprise payment (like at June 30) will trigger penalties for failure to pay quarterly taxes.
That last one bit me when I was let go from my last job. I had a pile of options that were bought back, I had a sudden influx of taxable income. I spend most of the year unemployed, but when I filed my taxes I wound up having to spend a lot of time explaining to the friendly IRS that I had no way of predicting I was going to be fired and thus no way of knowing I was going to need to pay estimated taxes in the quarter before the actual yearly filing date. It took a lot of my time getting this straightened out. Time an OS developer might want to use to develop software, and a cost of getting "free money" that you've forgotten to include in your "extra dollar" calculations.
And then, now there is a company out there that has an official receipt for money in exchange for "support". Hey, we need these things included in your software. We're paying for support ...
Bureaucracy not the Tax itself (Score:3)
Just like Warren Buffet says (paraphrased), just because you'll have to pay tax on it, doesn't make anyone stop trying to earn an extra dollar.... except apparently you.
It is not just tax that is the issue it is the overhead to do the government's job of figuring out for them how much you owe. If you already had a company infrastructure set up I would completely agree with you but this is a group of open source developers we are talking about here. They probably don't even exist as any sort of legal entity. The cost and effort required to set themselves up as a legal entity and then figure out whether tax is due and if so how much and what sort (should they be charging VA
Re:Try actually donating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Try actually donating? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Why was it important to management that the money be earmark for a specific invoice”able” item?
If you wanted to street the project to something specific, then maybe. But retroactively ? I can’t think of any specific trigger in the tax code that would require that of a donation.
And I can’t think of any good reasons from a management viewpoint. If you want to make sure the money is spent wisely then you need to review the quality of management (or whomever decides to spend the money)
Re:Try actually donating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Likely because of how companies do their accounting.
You've got your capital budget, your operating budget, approved projects, and who knows what else (not an accountant).
The company trying to make the 'donation' needed to keep it within the same bucket and needed the potential recipients to give them an invoice.
In this case, it was "we'd like to 'give' you money, but it needs to look like on your side like you billed us for something". And generally when someone needs you to account for something in a special way, you might need to ask if you can (or should) actually do that without causing yourself problems.
And if I'm a charity and someone says "we'd like to donate, but can you make it look like you sold us a car instead" -- my first impulse is going to be a little wary of that deal. Because, it's no longer a donation, it's money being disguised as something else, and the recipient potentially gets themselves into legal trouble by trying to do that.
So, you try calling the Red Cross and say you'd like to donate $1 million, but they need to make it look like they sold you an island you could get the same problem. They didn't sell you an island, and as much as that $1 million might be shiny, needing to stay strictly within the rules means you might just have to say "if you want to donate $1 million, awesome, but we can't do magic accounting to make it look like something else".
Re: (Score:2)
Why was it important to management that the money be earmark for a specific invoice”able” item?
If you wanted to street the project to something specific, then maybe. But retroactively ? I can’t think of any specific trigger in the tax code that would require that of a donation.
And I can’t think of any good reasons from a management viewpoint. If you want to make sure the money is spent wisely then you need to review the quality of management (or whomever decides to spend the money) not on a particular purchase. (example, the management may have done a very good job in choosing which 3D printer to purchase, but if it is a software project and does need a 3D printer it is a waste )
This just seems weird. If I were working at a charity and received this I am not sure how I would respond.
Good point.
I ran into similar problems in the corporate world where I wanted to buy products, but accounting needed an invoice and the vendor wasn't set up to deal with invoices. It was rather awkward.
More than that, however, you can you be a "non-profit organization" while invoicing? An invoice implies that you are demanding to be paid, not accepting a donation. Once you're demanding payment, you would seem to have dropped one of the primary characteristics of a charitable organization.
And then, of course,
Re:Try actually donating? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the invoice part is not that odd – non-profits do it all of the time. When they buy something they get a invoice. When they sell something they generate a invoice. And it is not odd for non-profits to sell stuff. For example my local botanical garden, which is non-profit, will send invoice you if you hold a wedding on the grounds.
When you make a donation you should get a receipt – proof for the IRS.
When you donate you might be able to specify a very specific project. Real life example – “Richard Johnson Memorial Urinal. “ (I hope he had a sense of humor)
You might be able to demand a review of the accounting for a project. This is generally done for people who have made large donations and will likely make more donations if they know they money is well spent. Heck, sometimes they hire outside auditors.
However, I have never heard of a donator asking for a specific invoice. In my example, the plumber’s bill.
Re:Try actually donating? (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically they don't want their departmental budget slashed by $20K next year so they have to spend all of this years money.
Management 101: You look bad if you spend less than you planned.
Re: (Score:2)
Your inability to understand business accounting doesn't make the problem tr
Seems legit (Score:5, Funny)
Our corporation has too much money. Please send details of how give you $500 Dollars US$ without donating.
-Prince of Nigeria
Spam bin... (Score:2)
Win a chance to win 20,000$ Send us 500$ by Western Union now!
Try a pitch that looks less like a 419 scam. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, the requirement that it can't look like a donation is pretty limiting. Most open source projects are ONLY prepared to accept donations under the exact same US tax laws your company is trying to dodge, and the ones left over (especially the ones that haven't yet attained actual status as a scientific non-profit) are almost certain to look at your proposal for exactly as long as it takes to drag&drop it into the spam/phishing/blacklisted folder.
Budgets, not tax. Jeez. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Dodging" tax laws has a negative connotation. Tax laws related to donations *benefit* companies generally as write-offs. I think your post was unfair and presumptuous as to the original poster's intentions.
I don't think the original poster's intentions / considerations had anything to do with tax laws and instead are directly relevant to financial budgets, hinted at by the "underspend" part. Budgets are different from a wallet or general corporate account. You don't want to get into dealings with the administration on misappropriation of budgeted funds.
As far as misappropriations are concerned: if your underspend is on a 'services' or 'software' category, and you use a lot of open source software, it isn't necessarily a misappropriation of funds (and the spirit of the account) to help ensure the projects on which your company depends stay in good health. The groups could've sold a $5,000 consultation or Support Meeting and just talked about how the org. used the software in question and had a chance to present ideas to them. And then at the end of the call or meeting, the project is $5K richer.
TL;DR large organizations that may have money to spend sometimes need some flexibility.
If you want to donate, just donate (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the issue was you requesting an invoice for something they never provided for you. If they issue you an invoice for $5000 for something, there are legal ramification that go along with that. You could then claim that you never received the item/services and sue. They may have to set up a separate business entity to handle this business and pay a whole different set of taxes on it because they currently are not set up as a business that provides services/items. If you want to donate, just donate. It is silly to try and get them to jump through these hoops for your "donation" so your company can claim it isn't a donation.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not illegal to pay in advance, is it? Just write the contract in advance.
Re: (Score:2)
It would, but if the project is in an early phase they might not even be selling support plans yet. If that's the case they don't have the sales and tax handling infrastructure set up to deal with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Generally yes - Which is what makes the retroactive thing from management so weird.
As the specific issue you bring up there are certain exceptions. If the company gets something specific back from the “donation” that part does not count. i.e. If you donated $5,000 and they gave you a tote bag (retail value $5) or custom reports for your firm (retail value $5,000) you would need to reduce the amount tax purposes. (And yes, lots of subjective loophole stuff here.)
You asked for something sketchy, and nobody bit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the fact that many open source projects are basically volunteer efforts means that they aren't really setup to pay people for their work. They would have to work out the taxes and it could end up being a relatively huge amount of effort for a fairly small payoff ($5,000 covers a developer for maybe a month).
That said, there are some big projects that should have been able to figure out something. Apache for instance has their own foundation. So does X (although they apparently aren't very good at doing taxes), Mozilla, and some others. However, none of them are likely to want to talk to you once you start prattling on about fake invoices. If you want to donate, just donate. That way you can write it off of your taxes as well. If management doesn't like that, then that's their problem. You shouldn't have to do something shady and possibly illegal to support open source.
Re: (Score:3)
Why couldn't they just give the projects the money in exchange for actual future services?
It's not uncommon for open source projects to recieve money in order to be able to implement a particular feature, write documentation, provide support, etc.
Perhaps this company could have done a small "{your-company-name-here} Summer Of Code", where summer interns would built code for the open source projects you wanted to support. $20k ought to pay for quite some code. The Open Source project would probably be happie
Re: (Score:2)
So you wanted to give money away, fine. But you then asked the project to lie about it and potentially put themselves at risk for fraud by asking them to make up some sort of invoice for a service that they weren't prepared to provide, like "support". Also, the fact that many open source projects are basically volunteer efforts means that they aren't really setup to pay people for their work. They would have to work out the taxes and it could end up being a relatively huge amount of effort for a fairly small payoff ($5,000 covers a developer for maybe a month). That said, there are some big projects that should have been able to figure out something. Apache for instance has their own foundation. So does X (although they apparently aren't very good at doing taxes), Mozilla, and some others. However, none of them are likely to want to talk to you once you start prattling on about fake invoices. If you want to donate, just donate. That way you can write it off of your taxes as well. If management doesn't like that, then that's their problem. You shouldn't have to do something shady and possibly illegal to support open source.
Perhaps the company phrased things the wrong way, or didn't think of the project's situation. If they had Function X on their wishlist for Software Y, why can't they write a check for $5000 for a developer of the project to work on that issue? Perhaps the project could estimate that creating such a function and testing it would take approximately 120 man-hours (for example), and invoice accordingly. Isn't that a completely legitimate use of a 1099 contractor? I am not entirely familiar with 1099 employee
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the fact that many open source projects are basically volunteer efforts means that they aren't really setup to pay people for their work. They would have to work out the taxes and it could end up being a relatively huge amount of effort for a fairly small payoff ($5,000 covers a developer for maybe a month).
This is probably the biggest problem... taxes and logistics of distributing the money. Someone has to be approved by all of the co-developers to accept the money on their behalf, pay taxes and distribute the proceeds equitably (how? 1099? That's even more paperwork). If there are 10 regular developers, that's $500 each, minus taxes, so around $300. Probably not worth the effort or political problems "Hey, Developer X contributed twice as many lines of code as Developer Y. So X should get more money than Y.
Re: (Score:2)
They could write an invoice for 1 year of priority support for the next year.
I've seen a number of free/open software projects that ask for funding along this line, often to fix bugs or implement new features. It seems to work pretty well.
You can also find something similar among the flock of (sometimes very good) online cartoonists. You can "contribute" by paying them for a specific date's cartoon, for example. Sometimes they'll "pay" you by sending an "original" printout of the cartoon, which of course really only exists in their computer's file system, but they do have a (c
Non Profits (Score:2, Insightful)
You can give a non-profit a donation but I don't think you can pay them for services, because then they aren't a non-profit. If there is an umbrella org, ie Apache, become a corporate member instead.
Re:Non Profits (Score:4, Informative)
The Girl Scout Cookies I bought disagree with you. Yes, I know those are goods and not services, but a car wash fundraiser would fit. The question of whether you are non-profit has everything to do with what happens to surplus proceeds.
Re: (Score:2)
You are the one who doesn't know what it means. From the IRS website:
"The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Now, you could've gone to one of your favorite open source projects and said: I want feature x - here is $5k for whatever freelance developer wants to take it on, that would've worked. I am always available to work on certain projects...
Well yes but it'd be silly to make it just random windfall for one developer (unless there is only one main developer, but I'm assuming it's a bit bigger than that), but if they have some sort of organization set up and it can't be a donation (corporate policy, whatever) then I'd suggest that with a twist, basically pick a small feature or one that was going to be in the next release anyway, work is "donated" to the organization and the organization bills them $5000 for custom development. As long as it is
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. I just spent the morning finishing up (I hope...) working out a contract between a user (corporation) and an open source project's authors to get some fixes/enhancements done that they need, but are going to go out publicly (no core competency concerns there).
So, um, yeah, gimme call next time - maybe you just need somebody who will manage the process. It's probably taken me 12 hours so far to get this setup, so it's not simply a matter of shooting off an e-mail and a check. There are concerns ab
IRS (Score:2, Informative)
"For those of you with open source projects for which would you would like to take donations but sometimes cannot, what complications get in the way?"
Why? Because IRS, that's why.
Re: (Score:2)
That is, if you have an OS project that is located in the US, mostly.
Otherwise you potentially have to deal with several foreign tax services. Oh joy. I'm pretty sure that $5000 is not enough to cover the hassle and aggravation you would get from trying to divide it over several contributors in several different countries with different tax laws.
tax fraud (Score:4, Informative)
Re:tax fraud (Score:5, Informative)
There is an amazing lack of understanding of what being a 501(c)(3) non-profit means. Non-profits most certainly can (and regularly do) invoice for services rendered. They are not "non-revenue" corporations, simply non-profit.
There is no fraud involved if a non-profit performs services in return for an agreed fee, or contracts to perform those services in the future in return for a fee either paid up front or after the services have been rendered.
The only thing the non-profit cannot do is take the surplus funds over and above their expenses at the end of the year and distribute those as dividends or ownership distributions to its "shareholders" or board members.
Now, if the non-profit has what's called "unrelated business income," that is income generated from activities it conducts that are not really connected, other than financially, with its mission, then it may have to pay taxes on those (for example, if a non-profit devoted to supporting a university buys commercial property as an investment, and leases that property out to businesses, that rental income may be "unrelated business income"). But that does not destroy their non-profit status for the rest of the funds they receive.
This is not, of course, definitive tax advice, but your post is about the 10th in this thread I've seen that has the very, very, very wrong idea that being a 501(c)(3) means you can't charge for services provided. They can, and they do all the time.
Hire a developer. (Score:5, Interesting)
Spend the 20k to hire a developer which you pay to contribute code to these projects.
Try this: (Score:2)
If that still doesn't work for you, then try something like a bounty. Offer them $5000 for a bugfix or a new feature. If it would have to be claimed by the end of June, make it about fixing some typos or some other easy to accomplish task.
Varnish Moral Licence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
nt (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprised.
If you have to do something underhanded like "A management catch was that it could not appear to be a donation and it had to be for something we had notionally received in the current financial year" then you're going to run into trouble.
My guess? Your company wanted some good publicity but couldn't figure out a way to satisfy its own beancounters.
The fault lies with your company, not the open source projects who refuse to fudge things to make the numbers easier for your beancounters to digest.
Re: (Score:2)
Good clarification.
Either way though, TFA's implication that this is somehow the open source project's fault is insulting and absurd.
Most can't do it (Score:2)
Most open source projects aren't setup as an actual licensed company, and many aren't legally able to do business as a result. Which is fine because setting up a donation button works well enough for their needs.
There is also the problem with most of the people running the open source projects being techs, and not business people. For them, the creating and sending out an invoice for "support" and writing up the contract for a "client" to sign (to protect themselves in this situation) is pretty arcane.
And
Charge for Physical Delivery (Score:2)
Tell them you are willing to pay $5K for a fully-licensed copy shipped to your business address. Somebody at the project burns you a DVD or loads a $5 usb flash drive with the latest release and ships it. That way you get something tangible and they get the money with a postal receipt in case the project needs to prove they held up their end.
I am not a corporate auditor but I don't think that would scenario would create any problems.
GPL-compatible of course (Score:2)
Maybe the project could treat it for tax purposes as one of those things where donors get something of value in return, which I believe is legal for 501(c)3s (DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So now they owe sales tax, and business income tax. Are they set up to pay both already?
The tax situation is straightforward for gifts (which are not donations and thus not tax deductible for the giver). If you aren't set up as a company or a non-profit, that's really the only practical choice.
Hmmmm ... (Score:3)
You mean, commit fraud?
Part of the problem sounds like your company needed it to look a certain way for accounting, and if the projects you contacted found themselves "how do we do that and keep it above board", maybe that was your problem.
But if someone giving out free software invoiced you for $5k for something they didn't ever actually sell you, that might put them into a questionable situation.
On the surface, it sounds like your "management catch" might have been worded in such a way as it would require very creative accounting on their end to satisfy your requirements for your gift. And that might have scared them off -- because when someone says "hey, we want to make a donation, but all you need to do it make it look like we bought something" can definitely make people worry if they're not going to get screwed in this deal.
Re: (Score:2)
That isn't how I read it. I read it like management said "to make it legit, you have to pick one of the FOSS projects that we are using software from this year. How about, say...CloneZilla?" If they downloaded a new revision or patch release (2.1.2 from 2.0, say), then it most certainly could be legitimately labeled "support".
I see the problems on both ends. It isn't simple to fix.
Re: (Score:2)
It's possible, but their wording made it sounds a little dubious:
Mmmm Kkaayyy! (Score:3)
Problem #1: Placebo Corp has funds that you would like to nominally give away but, for some strange reason (e.g. FSO is addicted to counting the wrong kind of beans, CEO thinks donating is a bad word. etc, etc, etc.) you are not able to actually give money away.
Problem #2: Open Source projects accept actual donations. Sending you an invoice would very likely change their financial and/or legal status, especially, when said invoice is for services they didn't provide or for a product they don't sell.
While I can't comprehend why Placebo Corp wants to but can't give away money, I do have a vague grasp of why an Open Source project won't invoice you. The Project is unlikely to have anyone who can easily deal with invoicing etc. especially in the time frame you are taking about. The simplest solution would be to solve the problem on your end and figure out a way for you company to actually make a donation.
Corporate giving, it's been know to happen!
Re: (Score:2)
I can offer a guess as to #1. Most likely Placebo Corp has a corporate donations policy, and corporate decides when and who to give donations to. However, there is some project manager who begged and pleaded for a budget of $X and didn't spend it all. Now, he wants to get rid of the 'excess' money because he is afraid next years budget will be lowered because he didn't spend all of this years. So, this manager, and apparently his flunkies, are trying to commit fraud against their company by claiming the
Sue them ... (Score:5, Funny)
... for being bearded hippies, and then settle out of court
Gittip. (Score:2)
You can fund developers individually via Gittip [gittip.com].
Gittips FAQ say "talk to lawyer" about taxes (Score:3)
Better Gittip should have said "talk to tax accountant".
I have an idea! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was in a similar situation once (Score:4, Insightful)
501(c)(3)'s CAN CHARGE FOR SERVICES!!!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Where is this BS that a 501(c)(3) cannot bill or send invoices? They are not donation only entities.
As long as the billed service is for volunteered work/services and the 'profit' goes to furthering the 'cause' its COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE to send an invoice.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but what do they bill for? The project didn't do any work or provide any services, so what do you create an invoice for that isn't completely fictitious? Bear in mind that fabricating an invoice can result in falsified financial records, which can cost you your 501(c)(3) status and get you in trouble with the IRS. That, I think, is the main problem: the business wants a fake invoice that they can "pay" to cover up the fact that they're donating, and the project isn't set up to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Ever been to Kickstarter?
You can sell a poster for $500.
Sell a meeting with lead developers (to discuss project direction, feature requests.. whatever) for $2,500.
Get creative.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely. Quoting Wikipedia, "While not-for-profit organizations are permitted to generate surplus revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion, or plans." ... "The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted."
Corporate Sponsorship? (Score:2)
As others have mentioned there are a lot of legal and tax reasons they could not accept the "donation".
However for future reference you could always go down the Corporate Sponsorship route. Many projects accept these and are also a write-off on your companies taxes (eg. advertising).
Sounds Like Money Laundering (Score:2, Funny)
What a bunch of nerds we are, we're looking up "money laundering" in a dictionary.
Kickstarter (Score:2)
Buy a MariaDB support contract (Score:2)
Buy a MariaDB support contract. [montyprogram.com] If your business uses databases, this gets you access to the MariaDB developers. It might help you get rid of some expensive Oracle databases.
I'll take it... (Score:2)
uncle sam's cut? (Score:2)
Consultants and small partnerships do this all the time. And there is lots of web and book literature on how to do this.
News Flash: Scam (Score:2, Funny)
Open Source projects are not looking to scam the government, and lose their non-profit status or whatever credibility they previously had. They are not willing to draw up fake bills of sale, just to save your company a little money.
Why would you ever admit publicly your underhanded dealings, and tax scams?
Need a middleman for FOSS donations (Score:2)
FOSS should have an org. that acts as a middleman for donations, tax issues, and foundation compliance. Make a donation to the org (hereafter MITM) on behalf of the software project, similar to Kickstarter but without the projects needing to join or setup a page. MITM can let accounts build-up until it's worth dealing with, find and verify the contributors, then help them with taxes or setting-up a foundation. MITM could also have donation clauses that let them change donations from dead projects to other s
Walk down a "respectable" street... (Score:2)
Walk down a respectable street and stop respectable looking people and try to make them take a $20 bill from you. Most will run the other way.
Now, if ou did that in a poor neighborhood or a college campus area...results might be different.
also (Score:5, Insightful)
The complications are from your own company.
Don't blame the open source project for your own beancounters and managers making things difficult to donate.
You are the one making them jump through hoops, not the other way around.
Something for nothing and the sex is free (Score:2)
I figure most are hardened to the Internet now, get rich quick schemes, and if if it seems too good....
all get a quick glance then removed.
But haven't seen what was sent to the developers, that would of been an important item to of linked to.
Me me me (Score:2)
The open source company I work for has a nice donation page. Problem is, for obvious reasons (obvious for informed Americans, anyway) donations made to us are not tax deductible because we cannot become a 501c3.
sounds like you were the problem (Score:3)
So, some stranger calls you up and tells you that they're happy to give you money, but you must accept it in a very peculiar way. Specifically, you must accept it in a somewhat dishonest way, contrived merely so the money can be passed to you.
Scam scam scam scam scam. Worse, it sounds like you're being asked to involve yourself in fraud or theft.
Frankly, I'm not even convinced that you're telling the truth right now.
If you have stupid processes, fix your damn processes. If you think should pay open source projects, then put things in place so you can cut them a cheque and be done with it. Otherwise, the money doesn't just get burnt - it goes back into the company to be spent on other things. Your choice.
For a small handling fee... (Score:3)
I will invoce your company for "transaction services" and then donate the bulk of the funds to the open-source projects of your choice. Feel free to contact me to do so :)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
consulting, hardware, membership (Score:2)
There are a few opensource companies (collabora, fluendo, yorba) that offer things like consulting, or commissioned work. you might have to pay them to do an actual task though.
would a hardware or hosting donation work? could you buy a server and ship it to opensource project. could you set up a mirror server for one (or more) linux distros on you network.
corporate membership. this has been mentioned already by a few folk.
licensing. got any centos servers, you could swap them to RHEL. maybe put RHEL onto so
Open Source Accounting Agency (Score:3)
If I were at a University there would be no problem. I could submit a grant proposal, they send the money to the Provost, he sends it to me, and HE ACCOUNTS FOR IT. The snag in trying to fund open source appears, in every case, that there needs to be trusted accounting. So, the problem is simple. We need a firm whose job it is to receive, disburse, and ACCOUNT FOR, grants and donations.
That seems simple enough. Set up a small shop (1 person?) who is paid to manage funds, handle taxes, handle banking, handle receipts and invoices. How hard can this be, right?
IBM contributes to open source through a Linux foundation. I contacted the Linux foundation about setting up an accountant or two to handle the accounting. They never replied. I contacted several people I know at IBM to "donate accounting services" or fund an open source accounting person. They said it was not possible.
The money would be useful to pay for things like servers (currently costing me about $3000 per year out of my pocket), or fund a conference, or fund developers to attend the usual conferences. It would not be to pay developers.
Anyway, I have tried to fund this project for nearly 12 years and have yet to be successful. If you can figure out a way to handle the accounting, I'm all ears. Send your ideas to daly at axiom-developer.org
Tim Daly
Re: (Score:2)
Companies can write of legitimate expenses related to R&D, etc. Donating money is not a legitimate expense. Claiming it is a legitimate expense is fraud, plain and simple. If you want to donate money, go ahead. That is also deductible and can be written off. Or maybe you can explain how you submit a fake invoice to your company (no matter what your motivations are) and NOT have that show up as a (fraudulent) expense on their tax forms.