I’ve been searching for the past weeks how we could achieve such organization. I found a tax expert and a notary that helped me picking the best legal form. In Austria, the easiest way to have people and organizations (IE: Jolla) to associate themselves together would be an “association” (in German: Verein).
Austria is basically ran by them as if you want your child to do any extra-curricular activity, have a garden in Vienna or train your dog… you need to join an association and pay a year/quarterly/monthly fee.
Based on past topics discussed here, bellow are the reasons why an association :
- An association can be non-profit
taxation law for associations .pdf
- An association can have non-austrian members/board ministry of the interior link on how to create an association
- Can be created in one day and represent actions taken retro-actively (for example, applying now for an EU grant, before the association is “official”) also ministry of the interior’s website
- Can be tax exempt if it promotes selflessly projects for the general public In that case we would fall under the Science and research charitable purpose (page 14 of tax .pdf - Wissenschaft und Forschung)
- Further representatives can be appointed up to a year after the creation of the association also ministry of the interior’s website
- It costs 14€ to be created also ministry of the interior’s website
- No required minimal capital meeting i had with notary office
- Not a pain in the ass to change statutes, no need for lawer or notary english link bellow
- Boards of directors can be changed by the members, membership can “only” be terminated with death. So members have more power then the “board” - I’m translating the German words, don’t picture it as Gates + Musk + Buffet in the board. same english link
- There is one law about it. That’s it. No need to go text diving in ancient old German books. the law
To create an association is very simple and straightforward (link in English) :
- Find at least two persons
- Write the statutes in German (I got a template already)
- Send those + required documents to the Associations Authority (either the central police station or the district authority)
- Wait either for a positive reply or no reply 4 weeks after sending the docs see paragraph “Deadlines” of the English link
Required documents are: full name, correspondent address, date and place of birth and copy of the statutes. Couldn’t be easier.
Questions you might have:
- What about tax deduction from the donation ?
- This would require to create a “fundation” (in German Gemeinnützige Schtiftung) which requires more initial founders, 50k€ and needs to be approved by the Ministry of Finances.
- But wait, don’t we have to set all the projects we want to support first in the statutes ?
- No, in the statutes we can/have to write a more general status : “support and promote the development of SFOS and distribute the material under LGPL license”. Then, we can have monthly meetings were we decide how to spend the funds. (@pherjung talks about it here and for ideas/priorities there is @dcaliste comment )
- Only SFOS and not all FOSS projects ?
- There are many already existing organizations supporting FOSS projects, 0 supporting SFOS ones. In my opinion, we need to focus on something.
- What if SFOS disappears one day ?
- Well it’s (mostly) open source, isn’t it ?
- Why LGPL license ? After people/corporations/GAFAM/BATX can fork and sell apps we financed !
- True, but so can the initial developer to make a living. Maybe professional developers have arguments against it, it’s worth discussing about it. Doesn’t need to be in the statutes.
- Hiring people across borders for an NGO ? (question asked by @poetaster )
- Not hiring the person but paying for a service instead. Like you would pay a freelancer.
- Should we wait for November for this to start ? (question from @poetaster)
- Actually there is, the 8th of October a meeting in Vienna, and we could start even before that !
- What do you mean by associating ourselfs with Jolla ?
- Jolla could be a member of the association if it wanted too; so could other companies/organisations upon approval of it’s physical members.
- What are we waiting for ?
- At least one other person, preferably in Vienna so I don’t have to send the documents by the post office for a signature. But if it’s further I’ll just do it.
- Why not a cooperative ?
- We would pay a lot of taxes.
End remarks, I will post translated statutes soon, need to find the easiest way of doing so, so you can collaborate on it. Ask questions I didn’t think about/forgot replying. Don’t be afraid to PM me.
Can’t wait to see this ongoing !