Re: [oc] non-profit organization

[John Dalton <john.dalton@bigfoot.com>]

I know this is my standard reply to everything
to do with administration. :-) but check out
Debian.

They confronted this issue a few years ago.
As a result, they set up a company called
'Software in the Public Interest' (SPI).  It is this
entity which accepts donations to the Debian
project and provides resources to the project.
I'm not sure of the details of the structure,
but I gather it allows Debian to accept donations,
provide a tax refund to donors and limit their
liability in these activities, without impacting
on the activities of the developers.

As far as I know, SPI is not an advocacy group like
the FSF.

Before embarking on the same path, perhaps it is worth
talking to the FSF and Debian?

In the past, Richard Stallman (RMS) has argued against free hardware
(http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-22-005-05-NW-LF)
At the time (June 1999), he argued that the cost
of producing hardware reduced the need for freedom,
and hardware itself could not be copylefted (or
copyrighted).

Since then hardware design has moved
much closer software design.  Generic fpgas have
reduced the cost of (and increased accessibility
to) the non-copyrightable hardware component.  Nearly
all of the cost, and effort, in todays hardware is in
the copyrightable, and easily distributed, programming
of the FPGA.  At the same time, accesibility to this
programming has been decreasing (like a software
binary).  I suspect in the current climate, RMS
(adn the rest of GNU) would come to the conclusion
that hardware is worthy of freedom.  I hear that RMS
is open to reasoned argument, just keep in mind that
he will not compromise on the freedom of software.

Perhaps the FSF and SPI could be convinced to take
opencores under their wing, maybe even creating a
'hardware division', saving us lots of administration
work?  At the very least, they could probably guide opencores
in setting up it's own structures.

Best wishes
John
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