[gentoo-dev] Re: Timeframes for Gentoo to Become a Non-profit Org?

[gentoo-dev] Re: Timeframes for Gentoo to Become a Non-profit Org?

[Daniel Robbins]

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On Sun, Aug 10, 2003 at 10:34:23AM -0400, Eric Jahn wrote:
> Hello Daniel, 
> 
> I wish to know what has been done towards Gentoo achieving non-profit
> status.  I think it is crucial for the gentoo system to become
> non-profit, considering the volunteer support it receives.  This
> question is directed at Gentoo management. 

OK. Right now we are in the research stage. At LinuxWorld, I had some good
conversations with Ian Murdock of Progeny (and, of course, previously of
Deb"ian") and Ean Schuessler, President of SPI (the not-for-profit of which
Debian is a project,) as well as others. The conversations were extremely
helpful and productive. I don't view the transition to a not-for-profit
entity to be a trivial process. We don't want to repeat mistakes that have
been made in the past, and want to preserve the integrity of the Gentoo
project. The mission for the not-for-profit is being formulated as we
speak.  There are two parts to the not-for-profit -- vision and
implementation -- and we are being very careful with each part.
Implementation will happen when we're ready, but we've learned from
experience that rushing doesn't always produce the best results.

> Most non-profits start their work and declare themselves as non-profits
> before getting an IRS Employer Identification Number/Tax ID as a
> non-profit. Why hasn't Gentoo done the same? 

Because Gentoo Technologies, Inc. was initially created to handle my article
writing contracts for MacMillan and IBM developerWorks and not for Gentoo
Linux, and creating a 501(c)(3) at the inception of Gentoo Linux (when it
had a handful of users) would have been premature. And between the "tiny"
stage and the "huge" stage that we currently find ourselves in, we have been
focusing almost exclusively on the technical aspects of Gentoo and making
Gentoo the best possible distro for our users. Our 501(c)(3) efforts have
been held up for almost a year due to some people pushing for 501(c)(3)
status for less than noble objectives (read: commercial interests.) These
issues have recently been resolved so we are now making rapid progress
in the not-for-profit area.

The overwhelming majority of free software projects accept volunteer help
and do not have official not-for-profit entities set up to oversee them.
This only becomes an issue when the projects get "huge." Gentoo got "huge"
awfully fast, and we're still catching up.

In a private email, maybe you could introduce yourself, who you are, and
what your interest and current involvement in Gentoo is? I can't find any
record of you on our bug tracker or mailing lists, except for an almost
verbatim copy of this email that you sent to our -dev mailing list, to which
I am cc'ing a copy of this email.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins
Chief Architect, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org

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