Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor

[Jiri Eischmann]

"Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" píše v St 24. 07. 2013 v 10:01 +0000:
> On 07/24/2013 07:33 AM, Brendan Jones wrote:
> 
> > On 07/24/2013 03:50 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote: 
> > > Earlier this evening I was asked how I expected Fedora to function
> > > in 
> > > any way similarly to how it does now without the backing of one or
> > > more 
> > > organizations like Red Hat. 
> > > 
> > > I gave the quick answer  "through donations" since I was not in
> > > mood to 
> > > give the detailed answers ( and taint that thread even further )
> > > however 
> > > I'm about do it here to certain extent since the questioner
> > > probably did 
> > > not expect me to have actually given this any thought which I
> > > actually 
> > > have although I have not chiselled it into stone, making it the
> > > concrete 
> > > proposal the community demands since it's just a small fraction of
> > > a 
> > > True gifts are largely unregulated and untaxed.
> > > larger idea or rather vision I have but I have decide it be the
> > > correct 
> > > time to share that part of that vision of mine with the rest of
> > > the 
> > > community to gather feedback. 
> > > 
> > Under the current model I thought it is not possible to make
> > monetary donations to Fedora (I remember Jared Smith saying
> > something about this at a linuxconf.au a while back) Hardware,
> > physical items, consumable media etc is OK though. Something to do
> > with US taxes, correct me if I'm wrong. 
> 
> I dont think "gift economy"  will work for us either because anything
> you "give" to the project can be seen as being given with the
> anticipation of return or obligations under us laws.
> 
> Anyone from the legal needs to answer the question what the options
> are regarding the Fedora trademark and donations ( can it /needs it to
> be change from trademark to something else ) and what Red Hat can and
> cannot do ( even if it's not willing to do that ) so we can as a
> community focus on the options available to us.

The legal entity of Fedora is currently Red Hat. So the only way to send
money to the Project is to send it to Red Hat.

That of course doesn't stop you from paying people directly for working
on Fedora or covering some costs that are related to Fedora.

But let me add a link to this discussion:
http://opensource.com/business/13/7/donations-open-source-projects
I think I've got some experience with how open source projects work and
there is a lot of truth in that article.

Jiri