Report from incorporation research committee

[Leo Franchi]

On 8 Jan 2009, at 06:19, Mark Kretschmann wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 1:06 AM, Lydia Pintscher <lydia at kde.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 1:01 AM, Erik Hovland <erik at hovland.org>  
>> wrote:
>>>> The primary concern with the SFC is both the reimbursement time  
>>>> (the
>>>> SFLC is their day job, they do this on the side I think) and the  
>>>> fact
>>>> that we'd no longer be able to loan money prior to the person  
>>>> spending
>>>> it.
>>>
>>> I don't see this second issue as a concern. It makes it a lot  
>>> easier to track
>>> expenses when those expenses are reimbursed and a document trail  
>>> exists.
>>
>> Well it is a big issue if people like me can't attend conferences and
>> other events due to not being able to pay for them in advance even if
>> they will get reimbursed later. And I am not the only one in that
>> situation.
>
> Yes, I fully agree with your concern. Considering that many of our
> contributors are students, or for whatever reason don't have a big
> financial budget, this could be a huge problem.
>
> Regularly this becomes a problem with the KDE e.V.; e.g. there have
> been conferences that I was unable to attend for this reason.
>

Yes, this could be a pain.

However, we've got to to keep in mind that even if we do our own 501(c) 
(3) organization, we are still accountable for our funds are need to  
make sure that we don't break any laws. It is possible that the reason  
the SFC is only able to refund you after expenses is a legal one---and  
if so, we would be constrained to do that too (of course maybe not,   
not sure. This is also why having them is good---they make sure that  
we don't do something illegal that the government could screw us with  
later on).

leo

---
Leo Franchi				(650) 704 3680
Tufts University 2010

lfranchi at kde.org
leonardo.franchi at tufts.edu