From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-08-16 14:52:26
Effective August 10th, 2007, Boost became a member project of the
Software Freedom Conservancy, http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org.
This means that Boost is now part of a legal entity under US law, and
tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the US tax regulations. Although
this doesn't have much short-term effect, it lets us move forward
with BoostCon 2008 planning with less administrative delay. Long-term,
being part of a non-profit organization allows Boost to continue to grow
and prosper, and to raise money if that becomes useful.
After considering the option of starting our own foundation (a huge
amount of work), the Boost moderators decided that joining the Software
Freedom Conservancy was a better option. The SFC provides the same legal
abilities of a foundation at NO cost to the Boost project. It also
minimizes the amount of legal and administrative hassles for project
members -- allowing us to stay focused on technical matters rather than
tax law. In addition, we are free to leave the SFC and create our own
foundation at a later time if we decide that the SFC is not serving us
well. Boost is not alone -- some other well known open source projects
have also joined the SFC (eg: Samba, Wine).
For those interested in the details, see a copy of the legal agreement
at svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/more/BoostSponsorshipAgreement.pdf
I signed for Boost, since I was the founder and am the owner of the
boost.org domain name. Dave Abrahams gets the credit for working out the
details of the SFC agreement, with the help of the other moderators.
--Beman