[OmniOS-discuss] Legal next steps

[Theo Schlossnagle]

My experience here is limited to the United States for approaching these
problems.  I don't mean to indicate that it is the right solution, but I
can only speak of what I know.

A legal entity must hold the assets. That can be a person, or a trust, or
an corporation or a community*, etc.  Community here is defined in such a
way by the IRS that I don't believe we would ever quality (and it's never
worth arguing). Given the history of "things" I would steer away from an
individual and I feel that given unknown nature of assets required to
operate and our weak starting point that a trust is likely not
self-sustaining.

What I would suggest is us setting up an corporation here in the US,
setting a purpose and a missions statement (that includes education and
science as we do those and they are eligible for non-profit status), elect
5-7 board members (who will be legally responsible for the entity) come up
with a small operating budget (< $10k USD) and apply for non-profit
(501(3)c).  This process would take a few hundreds of dollars.

Then we request that OmniTI donate the appropriate assets related to
OmniOS.  This organization can take donations (from basically anywhere) and
apply them to operational costs to forward its mission.  There is a chance
that this organization could be denied non-profit status as the IRS is
(sadly) a bit odd when it comes to approving that for initiatives for the
public good if their around open source software.  I don't see that as a
specific risk, it only means that donations made are not tax-deductible.

The gating factors here is can we get 5-7 people willing to participate as
legally responsible board members (I am not a lawyer, but the risk is very
lower here as there is very little money involved).

Back to my first point, if there is a better avenue outside the United
States for this, I would love to be educated about it.

Best regards,

Theo

-- 

Theo Schlossnagle

http://omniti.com/is/theo-schlossnagle
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