 The longest talk title, I think, in the program, perhaps. And I'm excited. We have a bit of a raucous crouch day. And the talking about the, yeah, right? Talking about the IRS tax situation, C3, C3, right. We're going to have a little wars here and little boats and shout outs. Because the topic is so exciting and so interesting tax situation, I want everybody to feel free to heckle. Feel free to ask questions as we go. We need all the help we can get to make tax information interesting. But we're going to do it. I promise. Just please ask for a mic before you heckle. Or otherwise Daniel's going to repeat whatever heckle you made and take credit for the cleverness of it. So for those of you who don't know me, my name's Karen Sandler. I'm the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. And this is our lovely tree logo with all of the logos of our member projects in it. You're probably heard of some of them. Applause for our member project. Yay. Yay. Some people are in the room who are participants. And thank you so much for working on this really important software. I equipped that if you're using a computer, you are using some of our software, most likely. So I'm, in addition to being executive director of this fine organization, I also am a lawyer, which point I normally hide behind whatever podium is available so that nobody can throw rotten fruit at me. But I only do pro bono work these days. And my clients are the GNOME Foundation and question copyright.org and also the FSF. So I try to use my lawyer powers only for good. I also co-organize the outreach program for women that is run by the GNOME Foundation. And I was also a mentor with the program. And I'm an advisor with the AIDA initiative. And all of these initiatives that help bring diverse groups into a free and open software are incredibly important to our communities. I am also a cyborg razor hand if you were at Ballarat in 2012. So like half the audience. All right, I gave a talk then about how I have a heart condition where I am at a very high risk of suddenly dying. My heart is I have a very big heart. And I have this pacemaker defibrillator in order to ensure that I don't suddenly drop dead. And I asked to see the source code in my defibrillator and was, of course, told no. And I have sort of made it a project of mine to understand software safety. And that's sort of where I'm coming from with free and open source software is as my personal and professional have become completely enmeshed. And I realized that we have an internet of things where everything is talking to everything else. And we're only as safe as our weakest link. And software will only be safe over time if it's free and open source software. So these are fantastic. Thank you. This is my Twitter handle, and Conservancy's Twitter handle. And if you are using your computer during this talk, I totally understand it's because you're live tweeting. It's totally cool. So I have an engineering degree. And then I went to law school right afterwards. And after I did that, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And the market was so hot that basically you just basically had to not be an idiot. And some law firm would hire you at the time. I was really unsure about the whole thing. Really had no real direction. And I was hired by Clifford Chance, which is one of the largest law firms in the world. It's a magic circle firm in the UK. And I was really comfortable with that because as a lawyer in a regulatory field like security, so we did debt transactions and IPOs and things like that. And what was comfortable about that is that I was a regulatory lawyer. And so I was able to make sure that the documents that were out there that investors read were good and adequately reflected what was happening at a company. And it put me in a really safe position as a lawyer because if my client wanted to lie to the public, I could not give them the letter that they needed in order to get their deal done. So it was a very convenient place for me to be as a lawyer I worked in London and then in New York. And I became like a real serious corporate lawyer, like wore suits to meetings. And it was really interesting. And over time, I just got a little bit bored. So I quit. And Evan Mughlin and Bradley and Dan Robesher had started the Software Freedom Law Center. And Evan had been my professor in law school. And he heard that I had quit, which is very unusual, to quit with nothing lined up. And he asked if I would want, and he said, you're a corporate lawyer. And it turns out that free and open source software. And you were an engineer before. I actually wrote a choose your own essay program for him as one of my law school essays in a really ugly sea. And I sent him the executable. And he asked me why I didn't send in the source code. In law school is not what you expect. But it was really fun. So he said, you know, we need, turns out we need, we have all these corporate law needs. Would you wanna come and learn about non-profits law and become, and I was like, yeah, sure, totally. You know, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to do something that I felt more of an affinity to something that maybe would work towards non-profit areas. And then in the context of finding out about my heart condition, all of that kind of came crashing together. And here I stand before you as someone who is passionate about software freedom and has this really quirky, extremely conservative legal background. Because of that conservative legal background, I have to tell you that this is really not legal advice. I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice and I am not your lawyer. And I think that's probably evident for everybody, but you'd be surprised. There are some people here to whom, who work at organizations that I am a lawyer to, but there is no one in this room that I am a lawyer to. And that's sort of like, and this is sort of like insight into my background and why, you know, the kind of thought that goes into these like legal issues and tax issues, it's all kind of along that same lines and I just thought it was interesting kind of to give the back. So what does tax exemption mean? How many people here are volunteer with or otherwise involved in a leadership role or some other way with a non-profit organization? So I'd say like more than three quarters. How many people here are contemplating becoming in a leadership role of a non-profit organization? Begail is hiding. I didn't ask how many people are afraid to join yet another non-profit organization. And how many people are in leadership roles that are regretting it? Don't raise your hand. So tax exemption basically means, so in the United States, and I should note that if this is a US talk, right? Like there's US in the title, but it's relevant to everybody here because while all of our projects are very global, a very high percentage of our actual organizations are in the United States. So for many of the communities that are prevalent in free and open source software, if you're participating in a community, there probably is a US entity that's connected to it. I mean, maybe. It's actually starting to change a little bit and there are organizations that are forming in other jurisdictions and concentrations and there are good reasons for that. But still, I think that the US org forum dominates. So in the United States we have state law and federal law. States are like New York and California and then we have, so you see when you incorporate a document, when you incorporate an organization, you incorporate an estate, which means like you actually form the legal entity and it has a home, it has like a domicile and it lives somewhere in this weird corporate fictional world and you have to declare it as a nonprofit when you, all of the states in the US have varyingly different rules for this and you can say, you know, I want to be a nonprofit and I want these things and then if you do that, you then have to have some status with the federal government and those have to line up, but they can be somewhat different. And tax exemption, I'm going to talk in this talk primarily about organizations that have applied with the federal, like for the top level tax exemption nonprofits and nonprofits means a whole wide range of things. How many people here know this alphabet soup? Have heard of C3s and C6s? Cool, so like three quarters of the audience again. So we call nonprofits are many different things. C3s, so these numbers correspond to the US tax code actually and what's amazing is that this has become shorthand, like everybody who is active in a nonprofit field will say, oh, it's a C3, oh, it's a C6 as if it's like anyone should know what that means, but C3 is a charitable organization. So it's a public good organization and a C6 is a trade association and these are the two forms that are the most common in our field in free and open source software. C3s versus C6s, I have this slide which contrasts some of the C3s and C6s. The Linux Foundation is a finding sample of a C6 which is a trade association and a trade association basically forwards a common business interest. It's organized, it's basically companies or individuals coming together to forward a business field of interest and on the other side, you've got like the Free Software Foundation and so Linux Foundation, the clips are C6s and trade associations and then the Free Software Foundation, the Conservancy and there are many other examples of all of these as I look into the audience and see like in my head the bubbles are popping up on top of people's heads with their names of their organizations are examples of C3s or charities and they operate in fundamentally different ways in ways that I think a lot of people don't appreciate because when you have the corporate interest driving the direction of the project that has a really or the resources around a project and organizations in free and open source software are sometimes set up in a way that the technical direction is not controlled by the foundation, the GNOME Foundation is an example of that but it's not always that case and it sort of depends and then a C3 is basically more it's a charity, so it's basically it has a non-profit mission and it has to forward that mission. I put this example of two different conferences that happen in this overall general region of the world. The Linux Kanjapan, has anybody here been to Linux Kanjapan? So a few people have been to Linux Kanjapan. It's a really corporatey conference like when you go in there, it's in a hotel or in a convention facility and there's like a almost like a trade floor sometimes if there's the automotive service sometimes there are cars on the, you know in some ways it's very exciting because it looks like very like trade showy and if there's clearly a lot of money around it but at the same time it's very very corporatey and it has a lot of, you know there it's really, so it's extremely well-run conference but it's very very corporate oriented and as contrasted with this conference which I love because it's community organized, right and these are sort of like the feelings that you get if you have a corporate control over the meeting place and the discussion, the result is a little bit different it's not to say there's good conversation that comes out in both they're really great for different purposes but for example I look forward to LCA it's one of my favorite conferences and it's part because it's community organized conference and you don't get the same kind of feeling you don't get that dynamic feeling and you don't get all of these hobbyists you know who come and are excited to be a part how many people here and I'm a little afraid to ask this because people who are involved in the tax situation of things might tend to be working in that field how many people here were sent to this conference by their employer? So like actually like, how many? So there's this discussion about what that means and how different that is for the recording and BDEL is saying, okay so multiple people here are saying that they told their employer that they were coming and they paid for it and I think that some people wind up doing their employer's work here to some extent and pay for it themselves there's like a real hybrid model but people, I think at this conference you get a high degree of people who are sending themselves here and are fascinated and I get there are bigger for the recording there are vigorous nods from the audience. So it's a really fantastic community oriented conference and that sort of like starts to give you an example of what the differences are between C3s and C6s does anybody know what icons these are for? Yeah, ADM and Pinchup. Okay, so my first job at the Software Freedom Law Center was to apply for tax exemption for lots of different free software organizations. This was like my first thing, I didn't know anything about nonprofit law, I sat down with like some big tomes that I read and I did a lot of research and I filled out the form for tax exemption and I think the first one I did was the Plone Foundation that's very like near to my heart because it was like the first one I did and then I started doing a lot of them. Like I just kept, I just kept, and like once I had the information, like once I had the application form already done and it worked, I used that same language over and over again, why freedom and software is important and they were just, those applications were going through, they were all, because I was at the Software Freedom Law Center, they were all charities, not trade associations and that is more of where my expertise lays. But so they were just, they were going in and they were coming out and it was like six months pretty much. I would like write the application, they would get sent in and then the tax, the determination letter, which is the letter that the IRS sends you to tell you that your organization has met their standards, would come in the mail and I would confidently be able to do this process over and over again. And I got the Instant Messaging Freedom Association started or Instant Messaging Freedom Foundation started and I incorporated them and I, as I sent that one and I was thinking, you know, I wonder how this is gonna go, right? Instant Messaging, it's different than some of the other software that I was writing tax assessment applications for and Instant Messaging Freedom is the corporate umbrella home for ADM and for Pigeon. And you know, I'd done a lot of work or trademark work for Pigeon at that point or I guess it was maybe even game still and I felt invested in that project and so on but I was like, I didn't really think twice because I said, you know what, it's the same application that we've been sending in and so we sent it in and it was the first time I ever got questions from the IRS and you could, when you read the questions, you could basically see the examiner's brainworking like my 13 year old child spends a lot of time Instant Messaging, how is that charitable, right? Like you could sort of see that question starting to form but then in the responses, we talked about all of the great things that online communication and that free and open source software brings to that and we talked about encryption and free speech and protest and coordinating really important things and villages in Africa that and all this real use that Pigeon was being used for and it sailed there. And I thought to myself, if we can really explain why free and open source software is important and charitable for the Instant Messaging Freedom Foundation, then we're set, like we've done it but then one day, things slowed down. I would send in an application and not hear back within six months and I wondered what was going on there. During that time, how many people here have heard of Yorba? Yorba Foundation, they're like about how well here you shot well. Okay, like third. So Yorba is the organization behind shot well. It's a California US based nonprofit and they came to the SFLC and they asked us to write their tax exemption application. Like no problem. But things don't move as quickly as they used to but we'll just do the same thing and we submitted it. And with this time when we got back questions, they were different. The questions that we got back were really intensive. Some of them were quite, we did several rounds of questions. The first round of questions was the kinds of questions that I would have expected before. Questions like funny questions, like do any of your directors or officers sleep in the office space of the organization? But the questions that we got back the second time were really getting to sort of really like is free and open source software charitable? And we had a few back and forths and eventually I got a call from the examiner that said that we're going to reject Yorba's application. And I said, what do you mean you're gonna reject Yorba's application? We're gonna, we have no evidence that this software, that this activity is a proper appropriate charitable mission. And I said, well, you haven't really been asking me to explain why directly it's charitable. So can I provide you with a memo that explains this fully? I've been answering your questions which have been really limited. And the examiner said, well, I guess. Now this is in the United States. I don't know if people know about, there's a very important holiday, American Thanksgiving, which is really like this was the Tuesday or Wednesday before American Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is on a Thursday. Nobody, like most people don't work Thursday or Friday. And a lot of people, it's a family obligation and you travel. So this was like the Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Maybe it was like, yeah, maybe Tuesday before Thanksgiving. And she said, if I have something on my desk by Monday, I read it. Otherwise I'm just issuing the rejection. So there have been a few moments in my career where I have worked really, really hard and not slept. And this was one of those. And it was really funny, like Justin Colonino, who used to be at the South for Freedom Law Center as well, worked with me on this. And we basically had a lot of family obligations and we traded this document back and forth between us the entire weekend, where I would ride it in the car while I drove six hours to family. And then I would email it to him and then he worked on it while he was on the train. And then his dinner was early and mine was late. And we just kept, all weekend, we worked really, really hard. But what we came up with was a really great, a pretty good explanation of why free software is charitable. And we went through the entire reasons why. And it was a very good formative experience to sort of like really think about why Free and Open Store Software was, and as I'm writing it, I'm getting really excited. And I'm writing it and I'm like, yes, free software is so charitable. And I really, really get into it. Our main rationale was that it benefits the general public in many ways. There's really to the point of privilege because if Free and Open Store Software solutions are available, then it means that people who don't have money won't have to pay for licensing fees. And in there, I felt like I had a real zinger because I talked about the charitable organizations that had, the organizations that were recognized already as being charitable organizations who were providing discount licenses to proprietary software. And I could really rant on that and say, that's just marketing for future customers. And what we're doing here is providing real solutions in the long run. I felt really excited that we came up with this idea that we were creating a public work. And Justin Colinino really jumped on this one. He's a really great lawyer. And so we talked about how if in the United States, a swimming pool that is available for anyone to use can be charitable under 501c3 because it creates a resource that everyone can share. And it's sort of like, well, this is totally completely analogous to that. It furthers scientific purposes because if you can study source code, you can learn so much. Probably all the things that most of us already know and in this room and drive us to feel inspired and continue to contribute to free and open source software. And then there's an educational purpose. The organization has an educational purpose for teaching about the, and going out and speaking about their software, but also the sheer software itself and documentation is educational. And the part that really got us sort of really excited and feeling like we had really nailed it was that we quoted Jacobson v. Kasser, which was a court case that evaluated whether free software licenses should be treated under contract law or treated under copyright licensing or as a copyright license. And basically that has a very different impact on how the cases are treated and what the remedies are. That in the introduction to the decision by the Court of Appeals and the Federal Circuit, they actually said like when they explained, the judge explained their decision, explained what free software licensing was. They predicated on it and saying that the licenses were the whole point was to create collaborative projects and dedicate certain works to the public. And so I was like, yeah, we're using like US government language to the US government. We've really nailed it. And then we never got a response for a long time. And any application that was sent in to the IRS basically never like it wasn't coming out. And it was really strange. And in that time, I left the Software Freedom Law Center and became executive director of GNOME. You know, I stopped being a lawyer for it. A lot of things happened in the years that happened that took place after that. It was really interesting. We talked about there are some remedies that you could take under US law to bring lawsuits to speed up some of that activity. But if you're not sure about how those things are gonna go, it's a real risk, you know, like to find that kind of legal strategy. And so while there were several organizations that were hanging in the balance, it didn't necessarily make sense to take a lot of action. And what we found out was that in the United States, there was this whole scandalous situation happening. And what happened was that there were applications going in for political, the Tea Party in the US and other political organizations or political... Yeah, PACS and C4, but also like just the things that were related to these political situations were, you know, people were filing charitable organizations and other things. And what the IRS had done is they had created a short list of key terms that would cause further review. And inside the IRS, the examiners were afraid to touch any of the organizations that had those key words in it. Yeah, boo, see, this is the heck of the booing. There's booing here. Booing for the scandalous situation at the IRS, which when it came to light, when it came to light, the, you know, things started to change. But what we found out was that open source software was on the list of key words. Boo, right? Everybody boo, but there were also a lot of things on the... Thank you, Carol. There were a lot of things that were on that list, including journalistic related terms. There were a lot of really important organizations that were getting held up simply because of this weird situation at the IRS and then the fear of, or the unwillingness of the agents in the IRS to really move on it. And free and open source software got kind of caught up in that and I have to, I'm going to confess this, even though it's being filmed, that I feel kind of like a chump because I only wanted to call these organizations free software initially, but I thought that to be, there's a yay coming from over here. Thank you, Bradley. I wanted to call them only free software because I was at the Software Freedom Law Center and this is sort of where I was coming from. But I thought that it was so much clearer to say free and open source software that whether the applicants and there's a therapist who's booing going on here, really, it's exciting. And so I wanted to, but I felt like being inclusive was more explanatory and clearer and since there's no real, real legal distinction in a fundamental way between free software and open source. Some people, is there going to be heckling for this? I'm looking at Richard Fontana for no real legal distinction between free software and open source software. Now that booing is his aim towards me, not yours, Iris. Bad lawyer. Bad lawyer, he says. Keith says. So, so, so, no, I'm just, that's just too funny. So, and BDAL is telling me to take a deep breath. I will meditate here, up here, on the IRS. And so I said free and open source software. I said free and open source software. I said free and open source software. I said free and open source software. I said free and open source software every freaking time because I wanted to make sure that it was inclusive, that people knew what we were talking about and that it wouldn't be confusing. But if I had only said free software, based on this list, it probably would have, these organizations would have simply been granted instead of held up, which is a really interesting, in my mind, like kind of perverse result. Okay, so BDAL is saying that they would have probably added it to the list. It's possible, but I don't think the list got edited from the, I don't know. There was a big scandal. The head of like various IRS officials were booted. It was a really interesting situation. And then one day we did get a response. And what was interesting is that Yorbo was kind of the one that I, the last organization that I know of that we lobbed in sort of confidently and then that got held up. And it was one of the first ones that finally, even though it was many years later, it was one of the first ones that came out. And it was, it was rejected for tax status. This guy is Jim Nelson, who's the executive director of Yorba. And he went ahead and he blogged about it. So, and luckily he's done that because now I can talk about it in detail, which as a lawyer, I wouldn't be able to disclose my client's secrets otherwise. And I can give this play by play because he, he went forward and he wanted people to know about this because he thought it would have real implications for free and open source software organizations overall. And he published the rejection letter, which basically responds point by point to that, what I thought was that really fantastic, like free software is charitable, yeah. And it basically is very confused. And I think, you know, Yorba is multimedia software. It's a photo editor. And the Yorba guys were so focused on having free software applications that address needs that are, were in, you know, proprietary software use cases. And they thought it was very important for free and open source software generally to have these applications. But, but for, for various reasons, I think the IRS was very reluctant in the same ways that they had hesitated over instant messaging. I think it was sort of the same thing. And in their letter, it's really interesting because it really shows how far they do, like how much they don't understand what we're doing. And, you know, looking at the, yeah. So this is kind of a dystopian quote. I should probably talk about this. So, so in, this is my favorite quote in the, in the IRS letter where it effectively says that we have not found any authority for the proposition that the world is a community within the meeting of 501C3. The world is not a community. Like amazing, right? Boo, boo. The world is not enough. And so it's really interesting. There's like such a disconnect between what the IRS is looking at. And I, I, I totally understand this. How many people here have watched the TV show, Silicon Valley? So like, like half of us. So in the Silicon Valley, I actually enjoyed it. I don't watch a lot of TV, but, but I felt like it was kind of about our field. So I wanted to, to, to see what it was about. And I really enjoyed it. And in it, in every episode, there is some reference. There's some, like, you know, investor, somebody who's like a CEO of a company or somebody who has a new startup who says, I'm making the world better through blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, insert whatever product they were creating here. And we've become really, you know, we've, that's become really prevalent in, in our community and in technology in general to say that we're making the world better. But free and open source software when done in a charitable way is actually making the world better. But because a lot of the language has been co-opted, I don't blame the IRS for being confused. You know, there's a lot of, of, of, of reason for them to be hesitant to say, well, how do I know when this person says they're making the world better that they really are? And you can read that if you want to read the, the Yorba rejection, you can feel that in their rejection. And this idea that the world is not a community is, is sort of a part of their struggling. You know, they're trying to figure out what makes sense to be charitable and what doesn't. Anyway, so word got out on a street in the free software legal community that, that, hey, everything's terrible for charitable organizations now. Free software charities are not really a safe way to go. And then we have another famous rejection for the OpenStack Foundation. And what was interesting about that, so OpenStack is a trade association, it's a C6. And, and they were refused for the, for their C6 status, their trade association status and this amazing rejection which actually was signed by the head of exempt orcs, like the person who was appointed following the scandal. And what she says, is anyone here involved in the OpenStack Foundation? So a few, a few people. And what was interesting about the, about this rejection is that the, the OpenStack board had published their board meeting minutes. And, and clearly the examiners had read those minutes and exerted a lot of quotes. So this one is your, that, that the board had taken a unanimous position that successful commercialization within a certain year remain the highest priority for them. And, and a trade association has to become a business interest. It can't be creating a particular product. It can't be working together to basically be a company, like a competitor to existing business. You know, even if it's collaborative, even if multiple companies are working together on it. And, and so what was interesting about the fact that they had read all the minutes is that they had exerted all of these quotes from the, your president said this. And so it was a really interesting thing. And I think this is not, I think the OpenStack people are still appealing it and it's still correct me if there's anyone to, yeah, so OpenStack, it's not a, it's not a final thing. Yorba, the Yorba organization decided not to bother, they chose not to appeal or to follow the additional steps, but OpenStack is, is that your question? So the question is how do you appeal it? How is it straightforward? How do you argue with this statement? Well, the thing is that, is that, you know, this statement is simply a quotation from a board meeting. Does it reflect necessarily, so this is where you, as a lawyer, I would say, does it, did that statement in the board minutes, does that actually reflect the mission of the organization or was it something that, that the board decided in one meeting that was a piece of a larger picture. And you, there are different mechanisms for appeal. I know that they, that one of the, the ways of, of doing this, that I think the OpenStack board was doing was they had meetings planned with, with the IRS. And so you can go and you can talk to them and you can try to change their minds. And then if that fails, you can bring a lawsuit. So there are different ways that you can do it and maybe the way that the IRS, so like for example, I think it was, I'm much more in the C3 world, you know, I think Yorba was really the wrong result for, for Yorba. If I had thought otherwise, I certainly would not have pulled all-nighters on my Thanksgiving weekend for, for something that I didn't believe was, was truly charitable. And you know, it, you know, it's the kind of thing where, where you might want to bring a lawsuit to basically clarify. When, to me, when you read the, the laws on, and the case law on what is charitable to me, free software, when done in a community-based way, is, you know, fits squarely within that, the way we have our, our charities and the way we do things at Conservancy. Like Conservancy, we have an evaluations committee that, that looks at Conservancy's mission, looks at our mission to support and defend free and open source software. So the, so OpenStack Foundation has to show the IRS that they are a common business interest, rather than forwarding a specific product. And it'll be interesting to see where that goes. Now there's new staff at the IRS. It's a different situation now than it was before. However, you know, there is a clear skepticism for free and open source software. And as I said, based on the, you know, the weird way that, you know, and I, I blamed the, a co-option of terminology just a few slides ago for, for why it's so confusing. I said, oh, those companies that have, they're using their, are, are making the world better and co-opting it for their, for their, you know, for their for-profit initiatives. I blame them, but it's more than that. It's also that when, sometimes when people participate in free and open source software, they get clumsy. They forget who they're working on behalf of. They don't, I have another talk about, like, conflicts of interest. And, you know, and, and, and these things are really real. And when, and the more public situations there are of people who are working in foundations, whether it's C6s or in, in charities, and are really forwarding their company's interests only or a particular product or, you know, those muddy the waters and confused and they distract. And it's tough because, because sometimes those corporate initiatives are very successful, but they distract from our, certainly from our charitable initiatives and our, our drive to make the world better through our free software community, which is the very basis and foundation of free and open source software. So, so there have been, you know, new rejections but, but a lot of orgs are getting approved too. So it's very confusing. One thing that the IRS was very clear about when I would talk to them on the phone is that they rejections don't impact existing organizations. So these are, this is just analysis for organizations that are new, that are being set up, but the organizations that have already been recognized as charitable, they are not subject to re-examination, right? But it means that they need to be acting according to their mission, but in a, you know, if they're a C3 in a charitable way and if they're a C6 in an appropriate business interest way. So, so it doesn't affect, so it's not like this catastrophic thing that some people had been portraying it as, where suddenly we don't have our charities or trade associations anymore, but, you know, but people were then saying, well, we have no new, no ability to make new organizations, but that's not quite true either. So now a lot of the organizations that have gone through with approval have been ones that have sort of a, you know, a taste of public goodness or rightness. So these are all charities, you know, the things that where you can say sort of like in the way that with the instant messaging freedom foundation, I was able to say, you know, there are these, here are all these great uses that the work has been, that the software has been used for that have provided real public good and that sort of thing. So it'll be interesting to see where this goes forward. There's a working group that Conservancy launched with OSI and there's a Wiki and a mailing list you can sign up to. That guy is Aaron Williamson, who is an awesome lawyer who also used to be with the Software Freedom Law Center right now at a law firm. And he is the chair of this committee and the committee meets and is basically watching the situation and also putting together materials to explain the situation and to help organizations that are starting to think about founding. And one of the interesting parts of this initiative has been exploring different kinds of corporate forms. So there are all, there's like different kinds of forms in the United States for companies that, for organizations that have like kind of a, you know, a public benefit in some ways but are a for-profit entity and there are all these kind of hybrid models that might be useful. Should our C3 and C6, you know, organizations prove not to be useful in the long run? Although I don't see any, there's no real reason to get alarmist over that. Everything seems very positive for the existing organizations and since some new organizations have been approved I think it's not really the problem we had previously thought that it might be. So what should I do? Don't form your own organization. Join an existing one. I mean, there are situations where you might need to form your own organization but there are some great umbrella organizations. I work at the Software Freedom Conservancy but when I was at this... Carol, cheers, yay, people cheer. I'm partial to the Software Freedom Conservancy. But there are, what's so cool about Free and Open Source Software and our umbrella organizations is we've got a whole suite of umbrella organizations that have different functions. They provide different services. So software in the public interest, for example, since Bdale is sitting right in front of me, is another umbrella organization where it's sort of a little bit more lightweight than Conservancy. So you'll get, you know, basically with different organizations that you might join, you know, if you join the Apache Software Foundation, for example, you know, there's a license choice implicit in that, which is not true of SPI or Conservancy. So everything is sort of like a, what are you looking for? We have a whole set of foundations that might possibly answer your, you know, like answer your need. So that's really useful. And you can even do the kind of thing where you join an organization while you contemplate, you're an existing umbrella organization while you contemplate your own foundation. So you can sort of experiment with the waters. We at Conservancy, you know, for example, help the MiPos Foundation get started as their own organization and they joined us and now they're their own independent organization. And that worked out quite well. So I would say, think about it before you go out and try to form your own organization because it's a lot of work for very little gain. And we have a lot of benefit in our communities by saving. There are some people I'm not even sure who I know have had a bad experience with trying to maintain. And now Keith is raising his hand on behalf of X.org so I can actually call him out some serious. It's not a bad, but it's just that it's a lot of work to maintain in your own organization and that our fiscal sponsor organizations, umbrellas like Conservancy, are doing this for everyone. So we only have to file one tax form. We only need one board at the top level and then we can have subcommittees for each of our projects. So it really gives you a lot of flexibility. And I don't know whether we have time for a question. Okay. So I'll just to say that we, like many of the other fiscal sponsors that I noted are charitable organizations ourselves. We just at Conservancy launched a supporter program, which I'm super excited about. And as a charitable public facing organization, we need to have diverse support from individuals because in order to be sure that we're free from the kind of corporate control that we're trying to avoid by having these organizations in the first place, it will help us in general to stay to our mission because our funding is coming from a wide group of people who have every right to pressure us to stay focused on the public need. So that's cool. And if you can afford to become a member, you should. And if not, you should. And thank you because there are many actually supporters already in the room. And if you aren't, then please just help us spread the word. It really means a lot. And thank you guys. You're all, pretty much everyone was paying attention during the tax talk, which is super awesome. So applaud yourselves. And I think we can have questions. We have maybe a time for a couple of questions and there's a break coming up. So maybe we can stretch a little bit. I suspect the answer is that I'm terribly naive. You're terribly naive. Thank you. I'm just kidding. But isn't the rational response to simply incorporate in a different jurisdiction? Why are we so obsessed with America? That's a really good question. And frankly, I don't know. So it's a good question. And there are organizations. So I think the Document Foundation is a good example of an organization that sort of said, we don't want any part of incorporating in the US. There have been all these problems. We're going to go outside of the US. And it sort of depends what your organization is trying to accomplish. So if a lot of the things that you're trying to do are outside of the United States, if you're trying to take in donations for, if you're a charity and you want to have tax deductions, which you can get, then you probably want to be based in the jurisdiction where most of your donors are because they'll be able to take taxes. There are some jurisdictions where you can take deductions off your taxes from donating to foreign entities. But that's, I think, the exception rather than the rule. And so that's one of the reasons. The other thing is that in a lot of other jurisdictions, it's very difficult to. And charitable organizations in particular have a lot of oversight. And so there are some countries that have, like, different levels of corporate form for charitable deductions. Again, I'm only a US lawyer, but free and open source software is on such a global stage that all these things become relevant. But having negotiated, for example, for one of the organizations I was involved with to do a partnership with a German charity, there are a lot of very comparable levels of review and problem I know of German charities that have had their tax status in trouble. And some of these issues are analogous in different jurisdictions. So what's good about the US is that we're starting to have this all played out. So we've learned a lot because we've had so many organizations in the US and the organizations that exist already kind of know what they're doing. And then what we're learning through the whole process of going through this with the IRS and seeing which projects are getting, which organizations are getting tax approval and which are getting rejected, we're going to have a much better knowledge of where the limits are in our laws. And if we start incorporating another jurisdiction, we're going to get that out all over again. Again, it might be worth it, but I don't know. Karen, like you, I always refer to free and open source software rather than just open source software or just free software for the reasons that you described. I'm often also accused of being religious in my use of those terms, a zealot and things like that, and that's got me thinking. Here in New Zealand, you can be declared a charity on the basis of four criteria, one of which includes promoting religion. And there is no oversight. There is no oversight as to what that actually means. And I'm thinking that one of the last freedoms in America is the freedom of religion. And I'm just wondering, would it make all of this a lot easier if you just simply declared free and open source software religion and then just tried to create organizations on that basis? You're not the first person to ask this question, but you asked it extremely eloquently. So you could do it in the U.S. tax code. There is also religious organizations are a category of nonprofit organization. But from where I'm sitting, while I think that some people do feel religiously about software freedom, I personally don't think it's going to forward our movement to newcomers to categorize ourselves as religious. So for me, and there are other downsides, they don't have to actually, religious organizations don't have to report in the same way that charitable organizations do. There are some benefits potentially doing it, but there are a lot of downsides too. And the laws are just different because they're structured for religious organizations. So it's a good question. Since all my legal work at this point is predominantly pro bono, and I probably would choose that time to work on other things, but if you want to do it, let me know what you find. So you talked a little bit about the differences between C3s and C6s, but mostly in terms of the criteria you used to qualify, and you've spoken about difficulties in getting the IRS to recognize that you are such an organization. Can you say a little bit more for the initiative about what it means to be such an organization? My understanding is that as C3 gets to pay and link in taxes and also donors get to deduct the donations from their taxes, but I imagine that might not be true for C4 or C6, for example. So I totally glossed over a lot of the specifics of this stuff, and this is perhaps a moment to plug the oddcast that I do with Bradley, called Free As in Freedom, where we geek out a lot on nonprofit issues. Raise your hand if you've listened to this oddcast. So a lot of people in this room, there's a joke that somebody once asked me, or said to me, oh, that's the podcast that three people listen to. So I sometimes like to ask because there are almost always three listeners in the room, and somebody wanted to make up a t-shirt that said, I'm one of the three. So we do talk about this in greater detail. On a more specific basis, between a C3 and C6 in terms of the charity versus the trade association and what those differences are, the biggest difference, aside from their overall structure and what their direction is and what their mission is and how they're structured, a C3 can, if you donate to a C3, you can get a tax deduction. If you donate to a C6, you can't. A C6 is necessarily controlled by its member. So a charity can have members. So an example of this is the GNOME Foundation. It has members that then elect the board, but it doesn't have to be like that. The Software Freedom Conservancy, from a corporate perspective, doesn't have members. It has member projects, but it doesn't have members and its board is appointed and self-perpetuating. And there are a lot of different hybrid models, and the same with the trade association. Well, with the trade association, it's sort of also everything. So that's a lawyerly answer. It depends. If you want to charge Jimmy Powell's money for certain membership levels, you want to be a C6. Yeah, you can't buy board seats. You can't buy control of a charity, for example. But you almost always, by definition, can in a trade association. On that point, you come from obviously a C6 charitable oriented perspective. What would be the great policy problem or tragedy if the C6 model became non-viable for free software? What would be the tragedy if trade associations became non-viable? If tax exemption for trade associations became a non-viable model for nonprofits in the free and open source software space. Like I understand your view on the charitable side. Yeah, on the charitable side, it would be... I don't know what your view is on the decision on the OpenStack Foundation. But if that model becomes from the IRS's perspective, if the IRS starts rejecting all of those kinds of applications, what's really the big deal? I mean, what's your view on that? Yeah, that's also a really good question. I'm not sure. I mean, I think part of it is that in our field, we've come up with ways that we expect to collaborate from a business perspective. And so we have to figure out a different way and learn a new way. I would worry that if there were trade associations, then C3 organizations, charitable organizations, would start to get abused to try to accommodate some of the C6. People will go through contortions to try to make really corporate controlled free software projects fit within a charitable organization role because there are some areas of abuse already in our field. BDEL to ask why they don't just operate. And there are some organizations. The Open Invention Network is an example of a for-profit collaborative initiative that is happening. That means that if you look at OIN, it doesn't have any public filing. So this is something I recommend to everybody, is go check out the filings of organizations you're interested in. Bradley wants to make a comment. There's a repository that has the collected Form 990s, which is the annual report with all of the numbers. And it's cool. You should go look and see how much people make. Check out their salaries. It's fascinating. And you can check out things like, how much did the organizations pay on legal fees? And it's really kind of dorky in a nonprofit's way, but it's fascinating. And it really tells you a lot about an organization and what they're set up and what they're doing with their resources. So it's a good question. I don't have a crystal ball, so looking into the future, it's really hard for me to predict. But, you know, I agree with you that the situation, were the C6 option to go away, it would be less tragic than the charitable association. We do have to wrap it up now, sadly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm sure we can continue the discussion in the hallway and in the following days. Thank you. Thanks.