[Adium-devl] Fwd: Adium, SoC taxes, and seed keys

[Zachary West]

As a legal entity, couldn't Adium be sued?

Zac

--- Evan Schoenberg <evan.s at dreskin.net> wrote:

> I sent this to David, but I think it's of general
> interest.  
> Forwarding my reply.
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> > From: Evan Schoenberg <evan.s at dreskin.net>
> > Date: August 18, 2006 8:08:23 AM EDT
> > To: David Smith <catfish.man at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: Adium, SoC taxes, and seed keys
> >
> >
> > On Aug 17, 2006, at 3:42 PM, David Smith wrote:
> >
> >> 	I have a vague memory that a while ago we
> considered making Adium  
> >> a legal entity... it seems to me that perhaps
> it's time to revisit  
> >> this idea. One of the reasons is for handling
> things like the tax  
> >> thread going on on the summer-admins list right
> now; the other is  
> >> the possibility of getting a select account or
> two and  
> >> distributing the seed keys around ($500 starts
> looking a lot more  
> >> doable when it has a 20% hardware discount
> attached, and is  
> >> distributed between 5 people). Supposedly you're
> only allowed to  
> >> distribute the 5 keys/account within your
> "organization". I'm not  
> >> entirely sure how Apple defines an organization,
> but I doubt our  
> >> loose confederation of random people would really
> meet the criteria.
> >
> > Sean Egan has founded a non-profit, the Instant
> Messaging Freedom  
> > Corporation.  I'm (going to be, once the lawyers
> get through doing  
> > their thing) on its board of directors.  He's
> basically said that  
> > we can be as loosely or as closely associated with
> it as we want.   
> > As a starting point, I'm going to be having Google
> send the SoC  
> > money (with no withholding, since it's a
> nonprofit) there, from  
> > which Sean will cut me the check and I'll
> distribute out to our  
> > mentors.  The tax result is that mentors will have
> $500 income, and  
> > that's the only tax burden involved.
> >
> > I'll look into how Apple defines an organization,
> as I don't know  
> > anything about it yet either.
> >
> >> 	Of course, the downside is that I have no idea
> how much work and/ 
> >> or money is required to do this. It might be less
> practical than  
> >> it seems.
> > I did a bunch of research on it, and had some
> off-list discussions  
> > with some of the people who said on the SoC
> Administrators list  
> > that they had experience in this department.  The
> take-home message  
> > was that unless you plan to have a full-time or
> near-full-time  
> > individual managing the corporation, forming a
> real legal entity is  
> > way more trouble than its worth... apparently
> there's a ton of red  
> > tape, quarterly government forms, and so on
> involved... nobody said  
> > anything that didn't come down to, "avoid dealing
> with it if you  
> > have any possible way of doing so."
> >
> > -Evan
> >
> 
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