On Wed, 12 Nov 2014, Anivar Aravind wrote:
Main Organizational challenges in this area is we need dedicated people to
work on regulatory and legal compliance side like 12 A approval and 80G ,
regular annual audits and FCMA/FCRA approval for foreign contribution
receiving . It is a long way to go for a non-profit and in SMC we are still
in first step . Being a mentoring organization in google summer of code we
cant even accept summer of code project money (because it is foreign
currency and organizations need FCRA/FCMA approval for receiving this )
It sounds like this could be a golden opportunity for lawyers who might be interested in Free Software but hesitating due to lack of software development skills. Do we know of such people?
The search for a way leaded us in depending a conservancy , Software in
Public Interest (http://spi-inc.org) , same organization that provides
Organizational support for Debian to process our google summer of code
mentor fee and travel support. Now we are a SPI-associate just like Debian .
Community depends Indian organizational support for activities in india and
SPI for supports outside India . By looking at this conservancy model we
felt this is the model we need to follow in India , to support various free
software initiatives within India. We initially offered this support to
Indian language projects alone , as an umbrella organization. We recently
supported savepoddery.com campaign for processng indian language donations.
If Debian india wants to use this conservancy facility , SMC may be happy to
offer it ( I am proposing this in personal capacity , and need to discuss
with board) Any of the support services as in
http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/associated-project-howto/ is not difficult
for an organization who already handling such legal issues .
This sounds like an excellent idea and we should definitely look into it.
In order to affiliate with other organizations Debian-IN would still need to appoint some kind of liasion who can speak authoritatively for the group, a procedure for voting on relevant issues etc.
Also do you know what the tax/legal implications would be for an Indian entity donating money, goods, or services in India to a foreign and specifically US organization? Hopefully the answer is none but it would be good to know for sure.
In my personal opinion , adding a Debian packaging of any ideas are not much
difficult task . For eg . Privacy and surveillance discussion surrounded
minidebconf was actually easy to cover , if we done it in context of
Privacy packages , cryptoparty and Freedombox. That may be a way to follow
Yes this is what I had in mind.
Partnering with debian focuses companies and non-profits to conduct events
is another possibility
Yes or even indian branches of MNCs which use Debian such as Hewlett-Packard.