SPI invited X.Org to join as Associated Project

[Keith Packard]

Daniel Stone <daniel at fooishbar.org> writes:

> TOG was a purely commercial group without any open source foundations. SPI
> grew out of Debian, who are many things but not commercial.

In this case it's important to understand the legal distinction under US
tax law between TOG, the X Consortium, the X.org foundation and SPI.

The X.Org Foundation and SPI are both registered under the US tax code
as non-profit foundations under section 501(c)3. Donations to either are
eligible for tax benefits, which (I believe) is fairly unique to the US.
That legal benefit comes with strong requirements on the underlying
organization to document how they benefit the public at large, and how
any donated funds will be spent in the furtherance of their mission.

This means that both the X.org Foundation and SPI *cannot* violate their
public mission statements without losing their preferential tax
status. Losing this status means losing much of their legitimacy in the
eyes of potential US donors.

I found the SPI mission statement that they filed with the US government
here:

http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/11-3390208/software-public-interest.aspx#mission

Neither TOG nor the X Consortium ran under these rules, and so they were
not nearly as constrained in how they operated.

It's entirely understandable why long-term members of our community
might approach any change in governance structure with caution, and I am
thankful that you are reviewing this proposal with our history in
mind.

The goals of the board memberships of both SPI and the X.org Foundation
for this agreement are to provide additional resources to manage the
business aspects of running the X.org foundation without in any way
changing the practices, policies or structure of the political and
technical aspects of the organization. In effect, we should see no
change in what X.org does, only in how X.org activities are paid for.

It is completely appropriate for all X.org members to review the
proposed documents and ensure that the foundation will continue to
support and promote free graphics software.

-- 
-keith
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 810 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://foundation.x.org/archives/members/attachments/20150115/4a0723ac/attachment.pgp>