[kelnos]

I would consider donating, but I'd frankly prefer to donate to tax-exempt orgs. That way I can donate more with the same effective "cost" to myself. I get that it's not trivial to set one of these up (especially for someone who is already in a funding deficit), but I think it would make donations a more attractive option for people.

Additionally, the email talks about funding in hours of development work, but doesn't mention what each hour costs... would be helpful information to have in order to size a donation.

[bigiain]

> but I'd frankly prefer to donate to tax-exempt orgs.

I would prefer to buy a new car from a "tax exempt org" to maximise the "effectiveness to myself" of my purchase.. That's just not the way the world works though. libjpeg-turbo isn't developed by a tax exempt org, and nothing that _is_ developed by a tax exempt or is a practical replacement for it.

If you want lib-jpeg to survive/thrive, donating to The EFF or The Red Cross isn't going to help, no matter what your personal preference for donating is.

(You don't have to agree with the assumption that a single-developer open source software library should provide income to keep the developer's bills/rent paid. But you do not get to make demands about how that dev structures his personal finances either. If he says "no more work unless more money comes in", you can choose to send him some money to help, or to allow him to freeze/abandon the development. Arguing about his tax exempt status is just being dishonest about you choosing to not send him money. Not funding it is fine. Don't hide behind some meaningless 'effective "cost" to myself' excuse for not doing so. Not unless you're prepared to set up a tax exempt foundation and guarantee him a salary from it...)

[kelnos]

This feels like an unnecessarily flippant/semi-hostile response.

> I would prefer to buy a new car from a "tax exempt org"

What does donating to an organization have to do with buying a car? (Hint: nothing, and you're arguing in bad faith.)

> But you do not get to make demands about how that dev structures his personal finances either.

Nowhere did I do that. All I'm saying is that I'd prefer to donate to projects backed by a tax-exempt org. If the developer can't/won't do that, that's their choice, as it is my choice to decide where my donation ollars go, based on whatever criteria I decide.

[TaylorAlexander]

Strange thing: Open Collective's offers fiscal hosts for simplifying paperwork, but if you select the Open Source Collective as your fiscal host, donations are not tax deductible because they say "the IRS doesn't consider software development a charitable act" or something. But there's so many software non profits in the US and I really don't understand that claim.

So Open Collective has another fiscal host for charities and those donations are tax deductible, and I'm now trying to figure out what the difference really is as I'd like to set up my own charitable organization to fund a farming robot I am developing.

Anyway I could almost just say Libjpeg-turbo could set up an opencollective as their whole mission is to solve the paperwork problem for open source projects, but for whatever reason their open source software donations aren't actually tax deductible...

Does anyone here know about this IRS issue?

[wmf]

IRS doesn't consider software development a charitable act

This is correct AFAIK and Mozilla ran into the same thing years ago. Educational charities can be tax-exempt so you have to have an educational mission and develop software on the side. https://blogs.gnome.org/jnelson/2014/06/30/the-new-501c3-and...

[TaylorAlexander]

Fantastic link thank you, I am reading it now!

[skissane]

> I get that it's not trivial to set one of these up (especially for someone who is already in a funding deficit), but I think it would make donations a more attractive option for people.

Is there any sort of general purpose tax exempt org for funding free/open-source software development? Someone makes a tax-exempt donation to that org, earmarked for a particular project, the org forwards the donation to that project as a grant (minus a deduction for admin costs/etc). Then on-boarding a new project would mean just getting that project approved as a grant recipient with that org, which presumably would be a simpler process than setting up a tax-exempt org from scratch.

[jahewson]

Not really. Tax-exempt status in the US prohibits donated money being earmarked. It also can’t be used to funnel money to arbitrary affiliates - they’d need to satisfy the permissible tax-free mission of the org. Plus those affiliates are going to end up paying the tax themselves. Without a clear picture of where the money is intended to go, it’s unlikely such an org could obtain tax-exempt status in the first place.

Note: tax-exempt status has become harder to obtain in recent years for open source projects.

[skissane]

> Tax-exempt status in the US prohibits donated money being earmarked.

Is that true? According to for example [0], a donation earmarked for a particular individual is not tax-deductible, but a donation earmarked for a particular purpose can be. I think a donation earmarked to an open source project sounds more like the second than the first – they are free to give the money to any developer they wish, so long as that developer is going to use that money to work on the earmarked project.

[0] https://charitylawyerblog.com/2015/07/02/donations-benefitin...

[kelnos]

I'm pretty sure what you've described is essentially a tax-evasion money-laundering scheme, and I'm sure the IRS would frown upon it.