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

[Glenn Strong]

On , December 1, 2003 at 04:10 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> 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.

Yep - the limiting factor is that we need to have a physical meeting
to sign the paperwork. This may mean that we do the paperwork on the
11th (the next date I'm certain we're meeting) and open the account on
the 12th, but I think that's an upper bound.
 
> 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.
[...]
> 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

The accounts have to be published at the AGM, which is the minimum
requirement. I'd hope (and expect) that they would be made public as
well, in the way you describe (in fact if they weren't I'd want to
know why).
 
[..]
> i don't know how much work it involves, but I'd like to have a credit
> card donation page on the website.

It's a lot of work - the problem isn't so much the software (although
security would have to be somebody's headache) - it's opening a
merchant account that's the hassle. There may be some way around this;
one obvious way is to use something like paypal or the Moneybookers
site Niall mentioned. I note that a lot of people seem to have
reservations about paypal, though.

> ...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...)



-- 
Glenn Strong