The Document Foundation Launches €50K Challenge, Legal Entity Quest 69
An anonymous reader writes "The Document Foundation, the group responsible for forking the OpenOffice.org project away from Oracle's control and into the shiny new LibreOffice suite, has announced a drive to raise €50,000 to set up as a legal entity. The Foundation, formed by numerous OpenOffice.org community members tired of the overbearing hand of Oracle preventing them from progressing the development of the popular open source productivity suite, has passed several recent milestones. It's released a full feature-complete version of its LibreOffice productivity suite, and announced deals with companies including Canonical to have LibreOffice replace OpenOffice.org as the default productivity suite in several Linux distributions."
Re:ad bait? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Here's a real link:
http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/
AC so as to not Karma whore.
Real link? (Score:5, Informative)
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/02/16/libreoffice-community-starts-50000-euro-challenge-for-setting-up-its-foundation/ [documentfoundation.org]
Re:tl;dr (Score:5, Informative)
Incorporating in the "United States States" would raise a lot larger risks by way of being sued under patents that aren't even recognized anywhere else and will make using it elsewhere much harder. Try coming out of your tiny shell, the world is bigger.
The 50k is only the required startup amount for any incorporated entity; if they're serious they'll need a lot more to keep it going. The 50k isn't gone either; you get to keep the money as incorporation (but not as investor).
Re:Fifty thousand! What the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
Fifty thousand sounds like an outrageous figure. I can start (and have started) a company for MUCH MUCH less than that. "The Steering Committee came to the conclusion that a foundation based in Germany would provide the best stability" *cough* BS *cough*. And their second choice is the UK? What the hell? Are these people naive or just lazy? For a borderless organization, it simply strains belief that they would choose a business-hostile jurisdiction to incorporate under. Hell, I could make some phone calls and have a Hong Kong company up and running by the end of next week. Even if they wanted to stay in Europe for some reason, aren't there friendly jurisdictions like Luxembourg or Andorra or something? The equivalent to Delaware? I smell a rat, someone (or someone's cousin, fraternity brother, etc.) is making some cash off this deal.
You could have RTFA and saved yourself a rant.
"After thorough investigation, the Steering Committee came to the conclusion that a foundation based in Germany would provide the best stability, not only for our users, but also for adopters, developers and enterprises," Foundation founder Florian Effenberger claimed in a statement released today. "To achieve this stability, a capital stock of at least €50,000 is considered best practice in Germany."
In other words they could probably get a €100 company the same as you can in the UK but it is considered best practice to have capital funding (a nominal stock value)
Incorporation cost versus real startup cost (Score:4, Informative)
As someone married to a specialist small business accountant, I can tell you that the main cause of small business failure is people like you who simply do not allow for nearly enough cash to burn through post-incorporation. (One person IT businesses don't count, they are just a tax avoidance scheme). Fifty thousand euros for a real company suggests a tight budget.
Re:Fifty thousand! What the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
You just don't have any idea what you are talking about.
If they wanted to, they could have a Germany-based company running for a few Euros - but that is not the point.
As explained on the challenge page ( http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/why/ ) they do have some good reasons to use
a "Stiftungsmodell". The basic thing is, they are not founding a company, they are forming a non-profit.
Quoting from the page:
> Foundations have quite a good tradition in Germany, and the benefits in terms of taxes,
> limited liability and international credibility are high. With the German-based model,
> activities are not limited to one country: the foundation can and will be active worldwide.
A gemeinnuetzige Stiftung is exempt from paying most taxes, and allows tax deductions for donors.
Furthermore ist is a very safe way to organize a community project, quoting again:
> In addition, the German model provides a high security and stability, as the foundation's statutes cannot be changed and,
> therefore, cannot be abused. Setting up a corporation or an association, on the other hand, would expose us to the risk that,
> if a majority of all stakeholders so decided, the statutes could be changed, even as far as removing charitable purposes.
> In order to provide safety and stability, not only for our users, adopters, developers and enterprises, but for the whole community,
> a German-based foundation is ideal.
Re:Fifty thousand! What the hell? (Score:2, Informative)
Assuming a 5% interest rate, the 50k will net them 2.5k in interests per year,
which (the 2.5k) is considered to be the lower limit for having a working Stiftung.
The money stays in the Stiftung, it is not to pay lawyers and stuff ;-)
Re:Fifty thousand! What the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
A "Stiftung" is a legal entity, but not a for-profit company in the usual sense. It's purpose has to be charitable and it's main function usually is to provide funding towards that goal. Plus, they may get tax exception. So the Document Foundation is aiming for creating a legal entity that actually is designed things like what they are doing.
I don't know if there is a minimal amount of money required for creating a Stiftung (I could look that up). But by German law, founding of for-profit companies is difficult. Either you end up liable for your company with everything that you own privately (your house, your car, you name it) or you have to provide a considerable amount of money as initial company funding. The minimum that you can currently get away with is 10000 euros for a Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschränkt), which has to be raised to 25000 euros during operations. That's not a fee that you pay. It's just the mandated initial capital. So requiring 50000 euros for a Stiftung does not seem out of the ordinary to me.
I know that for example in GB you can get a Ltd. for a few hundred pounds and 1 pound of required minimal capital. But that's not something that you ultimately want: nobody will trust such a company enough to make business with it in good faith. So this required minimum capital is actually a good thing.
Re:tl;dr (Score:4, Informative)
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], to start a Stiftung "there is no minimum starting capital, although in practice at least €50,000 is considered necessary."
It's only £20 to start a company in the UK, but presumably you'd still be advised to have some starting capital.
Re:Fifty thousand! What the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
And for the kind of "Stiftung" they want to set up, they need 50k base capital, as the law in Germany says. As simple as that.
Call me again ... (Score:2, Informative)
... when someone is working on "office tools" that are not mere clones of Windows and Excel. I find the MS office tools completely unusable and the more "Open Office" or how you want to call it mimics MS office the less useful it is imho.
E.g. editing a cell in "Excel" or the OO equivalent ... I type and realize the letter in the middle of the word is wrong. I hit left arrow ... and what happens? The curser is not moving left but the cell left of the cell I edited is highlighted. How retarded! I'm in "editing mode" the tool should realize that I want to move the curser and not jump to a different cell. I have to grap the mouse, how disappointing. If I want to finish editing mode I hit return! OFC!
angel'o'sphere