Open-source projects gain free financial, admin services

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Apr. 03, 2006

If you want to start a non-profit open source project but don't have the least idea of how to do it, your life has just become a lot easier.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro bono legal services for open source, announced Monday that it has established the Software Freedom Conservancy to provide free financial and administrative services for a collection of free and open-source (FOSS) projects through a single entity.

"The mission of the Conservancy is to provide free and open source software developers with all the benefits of being a tax-exempt corporate entity without having to do any of the work of setting up and maintaining such an entity," said Dan Ravicher, legal director for the Software Freedom Law Center and one of the initial directors of the Conservancy.

The idea behind this, Ravicher explained, is that programmers could "pass off the mundane administrative burdens placed on those wishing to benefit from non-profit status is a significant way to keep developers focused on what they do best -- writing software."

This is not just legal help in setting up a non-profit for an open source project. The Software Freedom Conservancy will be a fiscal sponsor for FOSS projects by providing free financial and administrative services to its members. It will provide individual developers protection from personal liability for their projects and will seek to provide participating projects with tax-exempt status, allowing them to receive tax-deductible donations.

The Conservancy will file a single tax return that covers each of the member's projects and will handle other corporate- and tax-related issues on behalf of its members. In addition, the Conservancy can hold project assets and manage them at the discretion of the project, which removes another fiscal burden from developers who are focused on software innovation.

"We understand the importance of having our legal, financial, and administration houses in order, but our focus and energy needs to be on our code," said Alexandre Julliard of The Wine Project, which is one of the Conservancy's initial members.

"The Software Freedom Conservancy gives us the opportunity to join with fellow community projects to gain needed legal and fiscal protections in a market where disruptive technologies such as open source software sometimes generate aggressive actions from other market participants."

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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