GhostBSD as a canadian nonprofits

[ericbsd]

I might need to register GhostBSD as a nonprofits organisation in my country soon, this will allow me to issue legal invoice.

The only problem is I need 2 other person to create a nonprofit organisation in Canada, I am sure my wife would take part of this, I would need an other Canadian.

OpenBSD did register as Canadian none profits as OpenBSD Foundation and it is similar to FreeBSD Foundation, now my question is should I do something similar GhostBSD, having a different name like GhostBSD Foundation, or something else? If we do something like that I will buy the domain name and have a hosted on our server or on digital ocean, probably I will have my wife managing that GhostBSD finance for use.

I like the idea of what OpenBSD did, http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/index.html

The OpenBSD Foundation is a Canadian not-for-profit corporation which exists to support OpenBSD and related projects such as OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, OpenSMTPD, LibreSSL, and mandoc.

Since NetworkMgr is use by some FreeBSD user, that could be good idea to have separate entity managing donation for the project, or I could just register GhostBSD as a nonprofit organisation.

What you guys thing of that?

I know I am the project founder and leader, but I want your out put and idea guys.

[kraileth]

Interesting idea, Eric! Here are some of my thoughts:

I'm not familiar with the law regarding nonprofit foundations in Canada or the US. On BSDNow Kris Moore keeps mentioning that the number of unique donors is very important so that the FreeBSD foundation can maintain their charitable status. Do you know if that's true for Canada as well? If it is, 3 people might suffice to found the foundation but taking that step could lead to difficulties maintaining it.

Other than that from my understanding "foundation" is simply the term commonly used to describe nonprofits. So a nonprofit supporting GhostBSD would probably be known as "the GhostBSD foundation".

Taking a look at the OpenBSD foundation's bylaws (http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/foundation/bylaws.html) shows how much time and effort would probably be required to even prepare something like this. And you'd most likely also want a lawyer to take a look at it which means that we'd need some money just for that.

IMO GhostBSD is doing good with a solid OS as well as an active and growing community. But I'm not sure at all if the step to go forward and establish a foundation might not be too huge a task for us right now. If you decide to do this, you should definitely mind the timing. I would imagine that this will be rather time consuming and lead to you not being able to work on the OS during that time. The best time might be a little while after a release happened.

[ericbsd]

It not that bad, it could be done in a week, I am already in a not for profit corporation, I know mostly everything and in Canada it is very different then US. But for now since we do no make lots of money from it I am not require to corporate it, but I would have to do someday.

[ASX]

Lets things flow in ... if required it will be done.