No legal entity yet?

Posted Apr 6, 2024 11:24 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: No legal entity yet? by kleptog
Parent article: A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

There are several legal entities holding funds for Debian in different countries.
However a Debian foundation would be a political nightmare. Developers living in the country
where the foundation is registered would be at a big advantage over others.

No legal entity yet?

Posted Apr 6, 2024 12:13 UTC (Sat) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link]

> However a Debian foundation would be a political nightmare. Developers living in the country where the foundation is registered would be at a big advantage over others.

Do KDE developers in Germany have big advantages over other developers because KDE e.V. is registered in Berlin?

No legal entity yet?

Posted Apr 6, 2024 16:14 UTC (Sat) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (3 responses)

Lots of projects have foundations or other legal entities in specific countries. I'm aware that sometimes this limits contributions or interactions (e.g., if an entity is in the U.S., it may be reluctant or very careful about accepting contributions from people in a handful of other countries), but I'm not really aware of any "big advantage" for developers. Could you elaborate?

No legal entity yet?

Posted Apr 7, 2024 2:33 UTC (Sun) by PengZheng (subscriber, #108006) [Link] (2 responses)

The move of the Eclipse Foundation to Europe is not for no reasons.

No legal entity yet?

Posted Apr 7, 2024 15:29 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

Near as I can tell they did that because most of the business was already in Europe and they saw that domiciling themselves in Europe gives them an edge in areas they would not have in the US.

They also explicitly note that for *developers* it doesn't matter very much, and most people won't even notice since most of the actual work was already done by Eclipse Foundation-USA and Eclipse Foundation Europe GmbH. It mostly affects the members.

So, mostly a marketing ploy with practical benefits?

No legal entity yet?

Posted Apr 8, 2024 2:59 UTC (Mon) by PengZheng (subscriber, #108006) [Link]

My point is exactly what you said, i.e. it affects employers of developers, considering the current tense geopolitical relations. Of course, for foundations like Apache, which encourages more individual rather than corporate participation, it does not matter very much for developers.