[danjoc]

>the issue would be if it were provided by a foreign entity without compensation so that it is essentially a campaign donation

Have you ever tried to write off open source work as a donation? I don't think this works the way you want it to. Software isn't a donation. Software is speech. Phil Zimmerman proved that rather nicely when he printed PGP as a book.

[snowwrestler]

U.S. federal election law is pretty clear on this. If a company that is normally paid for a service provides that service to a federal election campaign for free, it counts as material support of that campaign, at the value that that service would have cost at regular price.

> Have you ever tried to write off open source work as a donation? I don't think this works the way you want it to. Software isn't a donation.

If you typically charge for your software development time hourly, and you provide 10 hours of software development to a 501(c)3, you indeed can write that off as a donation. You will just need a receipt from the org to which you donated your time.

You can't write off typical open source work as a donation because you're not donating anything. Under most open source licenses you keep your IP, but provide a free license to anyone who downloads the code. Even if a nonprofit uses your code, you set the price to $0.00, so there's nothing to write off.

[mncolinlee]

Having run a US political campaign, this isn't showing confidence that you understand the issue. You're blurring two, different definitions of donation: the IRS and FEC meanings. In the past, I've had to count website or technical work as an in-kind donation, especially if I would normally charge.