<story><title>Funding Django is not an act of charity, it&apos;s an investment</title><url>https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2016/feb/04/funding-testimonial-divio/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoeAltmaier</author><text>Legally not allowed? You can donate to anybody you please I would think.&lt;p&gt;Anyway I&amp;#x27;m all for using software you pay for, because it has a higher probability of being around next year. One person donating a responsible amount is not going to guarantee that.  Its a start I guess.</text></item><item><author>dkyc</author><text>I think this comment by patio11 is very relevant here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;We don&amp;#x27;t donate to OSS software which we use, because we&amp;#x27;re legally not allowed to.&lt;p&gt;I routinely send key projects, particularly smaller projects, a request to quote me a commercial license of their project, with the explanation that I would accept a quote of $1,000 and that the commercial license can be their existing OSS license plus an invoice. My books suggest we&amp;#x27;ve spent $3k on this in 2015. My bookkeeper, accountant, and the IRS&amp;#x2F;NTA are united on this issue: they don&amp;#x27;t care whether a software license is OSS or not. A $1k invoice is a $1k invoice; as a software company, I have virtually carte blanche to expense any software I think is reasonably required, and I think our OSS is reasonably required.&lt;p&gt;I would do this more often if OSS projects made it easier for me to do so. Getting me to pay $1,000 for software is easy; committing me to doing lots of admin work over the course of a week is less easy. Take a look at what e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sidekiq.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sidekiq.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; , which is an OSS project with a commercial model, does. Two clicks gets me to a credit card form. If I actually used Sidekiq, Mike would have had my credit card on file the day that form went up.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10863939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10863939&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eloisant</author><text>I think what he is saying is that it&amp;#x27;s easy for him to buy a commercial licence for Open Source software (even if the licence doesn&amp;#x27;t grant him any additional right or service) but donations are legally harder to pay before tax.&lt;p&gt;I think it boils down to the fact that you can have business expenses, you deduce that from your revenue and it&amp;#x27;s all good, but other than that if you want to get money out of your company (salaries, dividends, etc.) you&amp;#x27;re being taxed.&lt;p&gt;I guess the tax office wouldn&amp;#x27;t want you to just &amp;quot;donate&amp;quot; money from your company to get it out without paying taxes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Funding Django is not an act of charity, it&apos;s an investment</title><url>https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2016/feb/04/funding-testimonial-divio/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoeAltmaier</author><text>Legally not allowed? You can donate to anybody you please I would think.&lt;p&gt;Anyway I&amp;#x27;m all for using software you pay for, because it has a higher probability of being around next year. One person donating a responsible amount is not going to guarantee that.  Its a start I guess.</text></item><item><author>dkyc</author><text>I think this comment by patio11 is very relevant here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;We don&amp;#x27;t donate to OSS software which we use, because we&amp;#x27;re legally not allowed to.&lt;p&gt;I routinely send key projects, particularly smaller projects, a request to quote me a commercial license of their project, with the explanation that I would accept a quote of $1,000 and that the commercial license can be their existing OSS license plus an invoice. My books suggest we&amp;#x27;ve spent $3k on this in 2015. My bookkeeper, accountant, and the IRS&amp;#x2F;NTA are united on this issue: they don&amp;#x27;t care whether a software license is OSS or not. A $1k invoice is a $1k invoice; as a software company, I have virtually carte blanche to expense any software I think is reasonably required, and I think our OSS is reasonably required.&lt;p&gt;I would do this more often if OSS projects made it easier for me to do so. Getting me to pay $1,000 for software is easy; committing me to doing lots of admin work over the course of a week is less easy. Take a look at what e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sidekiq.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sidekiq.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; , which is an OSS project with a commercial model, does. Two clicks gets me to a credit card form. If I actually used Sidekiq, Mike would have had my credit card on file the day that form went up.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10863939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10863939&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; Legally not allowed? You can donate to anybody you please I would think.&lt;p&gt;The point patio11 makes here is that as a company things are not so easy:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Both countries are very lenient with regards to necessary business expenses (必須経費 over here). Neither particularly likes arbitrary money moving out of the company; that smacks of unreported income.&lt;p&gt;(&amp;quot;unreported income&amp;quot; here means money paid to an employee but not reported as income). With a proper invoice and line item, all the boxes are checked and a random audit won&amp;#x27;t fall on the company like a ton of bricks.&lt;p&gt;Even if the system handles company donations, that tends to be more complex both internally and externally than a &amp;quot;software license&amp;quot; line item, and thus to have way more overhead and to be way more likely to be refused.</text></comment>