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Re: hmmm
by Anonymous on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @10:59
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It isn't KDE e.V.'s goal to hire developers. In this aspect it's very different from the Mozilla and Blender Foundations.
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Re: hmmm
by Andras Mantia on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @11:16
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No, the role of the KDE e.V. is to support the KDE project as whole (and I'm not even sure that it would be legal for a non-profit organization to pay salaries for developers). Better spend the money donated to them to organize conferences, promote KDE, etc. so everyone will and can enjoy the donations, not only some particular developers.
IIRC there was an idea (as far as I know which never materialized) to be able to donate to a specific area of KDE when you donate to KDE e.V., which still seems good to me, but you know, if you want to support some specific project or a developer, the possibility is still there to contact them independently and support them. Some projects make this easier (donation links), some less easier. And of course you can even now add a comment when you donate to KDE e.V.
Of course I wouldn't mind if some KDE supporting company decides to support a specific project (hey, of course, Quanta ;-)) inside KDE.
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Re: hmmm
by Uwe Ristok on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @12:35
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Maybe Eric is a good station to support developers. His business runs for supporting KDE ;) If KDE eV couldn't hire developers is OK.
I estimate if Eric get enough support (sponsoring) from the community he hire developers not only for Quanta.
Eric?
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Re: hmmm
by Eric Laffoon on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @18:46
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If Eric were a millionaire he'd have them all over for a party too. ;-) I admit that I've given this some thought and even thought about how to manage certain aspects of it. It's something I'd like to be able to do. It's not really such an easy thing to do because you have to balance the spirit of OSS development with financial aspects. It requires certain skills and practices and I have learned a lot in the last four years. I think I have a good aptitude for it.
The reality is though that there are a number of things that would need to come into place to move it to a larger scale. I'd enjoy the challenge. I talked about it in a recent interview. I would need to have excellent financial standing because having a number of people involved eats time like you can't believe. Ironically I'd want to get someone who was not just skilled at coding but also skilled at project management and interaction to help.
Moving into working on other programs you have the further complication of interacting with a project and respecting their leadership. Because I have an active mind I contemplate how these things might work. Perhaps part of what attracts me to it is that it is so challenging. I'm not into being bored. ;-)
I would certainly love to have an even larger impact on KDE application software, but everything I do is gradually one step at a time. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there are some things still beyond my reach. New things have to be to the standard of what we're doing right now and not take away from the other things we're doing. Things are only worth doing if they can be done with excellence.
We will see how it goes. For now I'm very happy that we are making the progress we are. It means a lot for me that I'm able to do what we're doing now for users and developers. It's hard to put into words. I just want to produce software now that makes people say "WOW!" ;-)
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Re: hmmm
by Willie Sippel on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @20:08
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Well, dealing with such donations via KDE e.V. (or some similar entity) would still be good idea. If this e.V. was "gemeinnützig" (don´t know a good english translation), and I think it is - free software for everyone and stuff -, it would be possible to use such donations to reduce your taxes - I do a lot of stuff for such non-profit organizations fot that reason (it´s one, but not the only reason)... ;-)
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Re: hmmm
by Anonymous on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @22:15
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> If this e.V. was "gemeinnützig" (don´t know a good english translation), and I think it is
Non-profit. And it's not yet.
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Re: hmmm
by cm on Monday 29/Mar/2004, @05:31
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>> If this e.V. was "gemeinnützig"
>>(don´t know a good english translation), and I think it is
> Non-profit. And it's not yet.
According to http://www.kde.org/areas/kde-ev/ it is:
"KDE e. V. is a registered non-profit organization that represents the KDE Project in legal and financial matters."
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Re: hmmm
by Anonymous on Monday 29/Mar/2004, @06:13
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It's of course non-profit but not yet accepted as such by the financial authorities.
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Re: hmmm
by cm on Monday 29/Mar/2004, @22:17
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Are you also talking about German financial authorities?
I thought they *were* accepted there:
From http://kde.org/areas/kde-ev/corporate/statutes-en.php :
3. Non-profit status of the association
The association pursues according to section 2 of the statutes exclusively and directly non-profit activities according to the section Tax Abatement of the Abgabenordnung (Paragraphs 51 AO). It is acting non-selfish and is not pursuing profit
[...]
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Re: hmmm
by Anonymous on Monday 29/Mar/2004, @23:17
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> Are you also talking about German financial authorities?
Sure. Only the place where the association is registered matters.
> I thought they *were* accepted there:
Pursuance of one side is not equal with acceptance of the other side.
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Re: hmmm
by cm on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @07:20
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You cannot register an association in Germany without a statute.
The statute of KDE e.V. states that KDE e.V. is a non-profit
association.
AFAIK *before* you register an association in Germany
that's supposed to be non-profit you have to consult
the financial authorities or you cannot register it with that statute.
That's part of the registration process...
How can the KDE e.V. be registered if its statute states false things?
IANAL, though, and of course something I stated may be wrong...
What am I missing?
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Re: hmmm
by Anonymous on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @09:01
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> AFAIK *before* you register an association in Germany that's supposed to be non-profit you have to consult the financial authorities or you cannot register it with that statute.
You're wrong, and statutes can be changed. KDE e.V.'s initial statutes didn't met the requirements of the financial authorities so there were consultations with them what has to be changed and the statutes were voted in Nove Hrady. Sadly they're not active yet.
> How can the KDE e.V. be registered if its statute states false things?
Registration at court and acceptance by financial authorities are two different processes as they're two different entities.
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Re: hmmm
by cm on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @11:59
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> KDE e.V.'s initial statutes didn't met the requirements of the financial
> authorities so there were consultations with them what has to be changed and
> the statutes were voted in Nove Hrady. Sadly they're not active yet.
Ah ok.
> Registration at court and acceptance by financial authorities are two
> different processes as they're two different entities.
Yes, of course, but I would still have expected the court to reject the
registration of an association that claims in its statute
to be non-profit but is not (yet) accepted by the
financial authorities... but I seem to be wrong.
Fscking legal stuff...
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Re: hmmm
by Eric Laffoon on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @12:23
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> Fscking legal stuff...
Exactly! I don't know all the German statutes (though I believe the e.V. complies), but here in the US it's none too simple either. That's why it is expensive and complicated to set up. In partial justification, governments do need to make it's not easy to set up "the church of drinking beer" by mail and open a tax exempt bar in your garage. ;-)
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Re: hmmm
by Eric Laffoon on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @23:32
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The problem with this type of set up is that it really requires someone with a lot of money that really loves what they're doing. So far mostly I'm just love. ;-)
There are thousands of dollars in legal fees to set up the structure and then the administrative costs. There's a real cost in time to pursue the funds and then when it comes to working with developers...
Everyone I work with on a sponsorship basis I have to first get to know over email, discuss how we see things, our thoughts, our passion for what we're doing... There are issues not only with skills but with how people work. You have to know that someone will work on this because they really truly love doing it because you can't look over their shoulder. There there is the interaction on what needs done, the actual oversight of the project laying out task priorities and answering numerous questions on particulars.
The process that I go through has evolved over the years and it takes a lot of time as well as knowledge of the program and communication skills. It's not just finding someone and sending them some money and getting some software.
I really want to do something like this but doing it well is more challenging than I think people realize. It would be possible to find someone who you just send money on to work on a piece of software, but to make something larger in a project you have a lot more issues and you have interactions. Maybe I'm a control freak but I don't like leaving aspects of things to chance that can make or break a project or release, especially if I'm using money from contributors. That's a major incentive to not screw up.
Anyway my thinking is that I'm not sure how many people I'd trust to do something like this on any scale. I probably could, but I'd need to have excellent financial positioning because if I wasn't drawing a salary it might be difficult if I didn't have time to work. I classify myself as a person who enjoys risk that he can structure to high probability favorable circumstances. I'm risk averse where those risks remove my control or cause things to blow up if they don't go perfect. My paranoia is hard earned and serves me well. Also my business is backwards of most jobs. my schedule is flexible during the week and I leave the house to work on weekends. If I had a regular job I'd get fired for the time I spend on Quanta. Probably sooner actually. I haven't had a job for 15 years... I don't like them. At my worst I'm still my best boss ever. ;-)
My thinking is that there is no way I can look at expanding what I do too fast. Having said that the eventual possibility that I may be able to expand what I've been doing with Quanta seems like a logical progression. It still requires a lot of problems to be solved. Paradoxically a large enough amount of user support would necessitate moving in that direction faster. ;-)
The fact remains that no matter how grand our plans we have to look at things day by day and make good decisions. I'm personally happy to take my time, not burn out and not risk personal financial disaster by trying to do too much more than I can at a particular time.
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Re: hmmm
by Ian Monroe on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @07:49
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All I was suggesting was using KDE e.V. as place to donate money for quanta developers. In other words, what is happening now with the benefit of non-profit status. Though I would imagine a lot of that benefit would be lost if its only registered in Germany. And sure its legal for non-profits to pay employees, they do it all the time. Non-profit means you don't have a profit, not that your working for free.
The objective of KDE e.V.
a. The objective of the association is the promotion of science, research, education, art and culture by means of creating and distributing general purpose computer software free of charge to the public. The association arranges scientific talks in the area of computer science that are open to the public. The association is strictly a non-profit organization.
b. The objective of the association is reached by creating and distributing the K Desktop Environment in the public domain.
Supporting developers doesn't seem out of its scope, even if this isn't what they do now.
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Re: hmmm
by Eric Laffoon on Wednesday 31/Mar/2004, @07:25
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Sponsoring developers is outside the scope of KDE e.V. They do other very useful things.
Sponsoring developers is a de facto endorsement of the developer and project. This means that if you're going to do it centrally you need come up with a "fair" distribution which is a recipe for a lot of wrangling (instead of coding) by developers. All of this is rather silly because a user can in fact choose which projects they want to support. To top it all off, last year the e.V. raised about enough money to sponsor one developer, but they used money for other things that were needed.
What you're asking for adds up to too many real problems. If all you're talking is having a non profit foundation for funding development, when the numbers work out I'm happy to do that and to pursue larger contributors. I'm also one of the largest sponsors in KDE. If what you want is a non profit channeling funds into KDE development our project is probably the most likely to evolve into that.
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