About funding and all that

[triplus]

One thing i seen some projects doing (but i personally have no experience with it) is providing the option for donations on a recurring basis:

https://www.patreon.com/

Anyway the solutions mentioned would be a good start. After founding increases and companies start to get involved more creating a foundation or going under the umbrella of another one will make more sense. There will probably be the need to set some rules on the code quality and maintenance of it over time. But that is stuff for the future when this becomes necessary.

[yorik]

I just started a "donate" page: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Donate

[triplus]

I just started a "donate" page: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Donate

Looking good.

There is also a "jobs" section on the forum, where you can post job proposals.

Link to the section probably should be included.

[PrzemoF]

I just started a "donate" page: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Donate

Very good text explaining clearly all the facets of donating.

P.S. The donation link points to a German version of paypal page, but with $ as currency We should have something in English/euro as well..

[yorik]

The link seems a default one, it doesn't contain anything that specifies dollar or german language... This must be paypal's feat...

[jmaustpc]

The link seems a default one, it doesn't contain anything that specifies dollar or german language... This must be paypal's feat...

Hi guys
I just checked and for me I get a German language page and USD.

[crobar]

Just my two cents, but I think a good way to allow people to pay would be to set up a company (can be a non-profit). It's nice and easy to understand for the tax authorities, and if some day someone wants to pay some devs to do some specific work that won't get done otherwise there's a vehicle set up already for you to do that. in the UK the only burden on limited companies is to produce a set of accounts each year, and it costs about 20 euros to register the company. Don't know about Germany. If you make it a limited company there's also then less risk for anyone involved, as it's separate from your private financial affairs. You could set up the company charter in such a way that it prevents anyone 'taking over' or similar problems.

[yorik]

Of course, a non-profit company (NGO or foundation) would be the best solution, but it's a huge amount of work (and money, you will probably need an accountant and/or lawyer to spend a couple of hours here and there,etc). Nobody at the moment has time and will to do that I think. So that's more something to keep for later, when FreeCAD rules the world...

[arlenn]

I will say that I am very impressed with the progress that FreeCAD has made in a couple of years! the last time I checked it out hardly usable (don't know the version), it now shows a great deal of promise.

I was having this very discussion with my college today, about affordable 3D CAD solutions. Both of us are Mechanical/Mechatronic Engineers and while we mostly use some of the big packages at work, none of us can actually afford that for our own things; and we both want to stay above board and not use "student" licences at home. (I am also a Linux enthusiast, and its nice to have a non-windows option)

I see a lot of good funding ideas, but I'm curious just how much user-funded support might be available from the CAD/Maker communities, if demonstrated how much progress has been made? Would any of the Maker / CAD forms / sites give away or reciprocal banner advertising? in hope FreeCAD (and or the reciprocating community) generating donations? Seems that there could be similar community goals?

I would love to assist materially, but like the devs, I am also super busy. (I have also very little to offer, having weak programming background, and really no ability to translate documentation)

... Anyway, progress looks great! keep it up.

[piffpoof]

Some people asked me about a "donate" button, there was one on the sourceforge page, that linked to Jürgen's paypal account I think. We could place that button on the freecadweb homepage, no?

In any case, the money question is becoming recurrent... More and more people are wanting to pay... Maybe it is time to think of good uses we could do with money? There is also the problem of organizing this, I suppose if you begin to gather a significative amount of money, you need a kind of structure (foundation, etc...) I have no idea of how much effort and work is needed to put in setting up and maintaining a foundation...

hello all

as these queries and discussions border on areas I work near and through, I thought I would give a summary and some points.

First, I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant but I deal with them frequently in an international context and can lend some experience (the school of hard knocks) to this forum thread.

NGO/Trust/Not-For-Profit Incorporation

• this is big machinery, which isn't a negative statement, only that it is a big machine built for a big job. And with it goes a big price. If one considers being compliant with multiple tax domains then the price goes up quickly. A simple setup which is compliant with one tax jurisdiction would run €/$/£5,000. Hourly rate is about €/$/£50 per hour. So phone calls, photocopying count on 50 an hour. The thing that gets me is you even pay for their mistakes! To be sure of these figures, I phoned and confirmed these prices before this post. But that price is specific to one tax jurisdiction only and is for a bare bones structure - no intellectual property, patents, copyrights etc. Tax compliance with another country greatly inflates the cost. Annual filing would be a minimum of €/$/£500 - once again the price for bare bones only. And that also goes up quickly as multiple jurisdictions have to be allowed for.

Number of Tax Jurisdictions

• the European Union (EU) runs a homogenised tax system (of sorts). It's not the same everywhere but the member countries are required by treaty to respect the tax systems of the other members. N America is not that way with 51 tax jurisdictions in the USA and 10 or more in Canada. Mexico I am not familiar with. Australia also, I am not sure if they have state based taxation as well as national. And incorporating a company in the 20-odd EU members ranges all over as to what is allowed, not allowed, required, etc.

Basically the more tax jurisdictions that are to be complied with then the more complexity. And the more skilled a lawyer and accountant is needed to be. Read this as more money per hour.

A point to consider is that it is not simple filing for tax purposes in a domain where you are not frequently based. There are many things you miss, such as the requirement to present a document by a certain date at the local tax office. Of course everyone who lives there knows this but you get caught out. So you need to retain a representative (usually a lawyer or accountant) to do this. See hourly rate above.

Then there is the burden of providing documents of tax shelter status etc. in other domains. At this point you need translation, and not your Aunt Mimie but rather a "certified" translator. Oh, and by the way, translators are only certified for translating in one direction (e.g. Spanish to French but not French to Spanish). Read more money.

And then you need to move those documents to another domain. So you get the Apostille form produced, but then you find out that the country in question is not a signatory to the Apostille Convention.

To those who reply that "my cousin does this for €/$/£100, my reply is "you get what you pay for." In one case I am familiar with the party didn't want to pay for the tax advice in setting up their trust and had a Trust Company do that. Except the Trust Company forgot 2 words in the articles of creation and €/$/£100,000 immediately went to the tax authority. All of a sudden getting the necessary experts looked cheap. And the fine print back at the Trust Company made them blameless in the eyes of the law. Bye bye €/$/£100,000!

Payment Methods
The two mentioned in this posting are PayPal and BitCoin. Probably you can leave BitCoin out as it has a negative connotation in a lot of the public's mind. A wonderful idea that is amazingly coded, but the image in the press across countries is that it is a haven for drug lords and arms dealers. PayPal is almost universal and easily accessible to "Ma and Pa" operations - and I presume that these are the people most likely to donate. Yorik's idea

... that linked to Jürgen's paypal account I think

of Jürgen's PayPal account is probably the best one at this point.

The Future
If the Alpha-Beta Foundation all of a sudden decides to gift a gazillion €/$/£ to FreeCAD then that bridge can be crossed at that point. And the same if dear old Aunt Mimie gets over the sleight of not being trusted to translate our documents, and leaves us a gazillion €/$/£ in her will.

Until either of those things happen, it is probably the most efficient and straight forward to follow the PayPal account method. Up to this point, tax authorities have been making noises about taxing "all that profit being made on eBay" but so far it has not happened. And if it does there will be lots of fish out there that make more than FreeCAD receives in donations who they will go after first.

just some thoughts from the "school of hard knocks"...

Dean