[Fsfe-ie] Patent work restart (was: A fresh and accessable source...)

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

David Golden <david at oldr.net> writes:

> > We should have a patents site sometime in December.  Irish Free Software
> > Organisation (IFSO) is almost set up, and we should soon have ifso.ie
> >
> 
> Will IFSO be sufficiently formally set up in the near future to accept 
> donations into its own bank account (and issue receipts for the donations!)?

yes.
Glenn is getting a bank account set up, hopefully by Dec 11th.  ...and
we'll buy a receipt book.

The bank account is needed to prove our existence so that we can get a
domain, so this is being done asap.

Once IFSO is set up, we'll raise some initial funds from membership
fees, which I think we've agreed to set at 20 euro.  This will cover
registering a domain (~55euro), hosting a first annual IFSO conference,
maybe some booth-space at related tradeshows, and probably some printing
or postage costs during the year.

Members will be voting for the committee next year, so we don't want to
set the rates too low and end up with a load of only mildly-interested
voters.  20 quid should be affordable to anyone that wants to support
IFSO (I'm currently unemployed and broke, but I can find 20 quid).  And
it's enough to give us a decent bit of funding for whatever comes up.

I can't speak for the organisation since we haven't officially discussed
all this yet, but I expect IFSO will be public about it's cashflow, like
FSFeurope is:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/about/funds/2002.en.html

I also expect that IFSO will be conservative with cash.

> While I don't actually have significant free funds myself at this very moment 
> (I'm a bit donated-out after the last FFII drive),  I might in future, and I 
> assume some Irish people might like to financially support close-to-home IFSO 
> efforts.

I don't know how much work it involves, but I'd like to have a credit
card donation page on the website.  There is a Free Software service
available, and FSF have it set up, so I'll ask them about it.  But
fsfeurope.org and ipjustice.org haven't bothered to set this up, so
maybe it's a world of hassle.  ipjustice.org does have a paypal account,
I'm a bit wary about paypal though.  I'll look into all this properly at
some point...
...but for now, we'll have a bank account for cash transfers, and we'll
take donations in person and give written receipts.

(I presume, can't speak for the org...)

-- 
Ciaran O'Riordan - http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/