25 Apr
2020
25 Apr
'20
1:01 a.m.
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