[Board] IRS 501c3 Requirement: Dropping the Project Sponsorship program

[Daniel Morissette]

This is an FYI for the benefit of those who do not read the bard meeting 
minutes in detail, one of the outcomes of our IRS 501c3 saga (i.e. 
getting a non-profit legal status for OSGeo) is that our Project 
Sponsorship [1][2] program is not an acceptable activity for a 
(US-based) non-profit since it would essentially be competing with 
for-profit software vendors with an unfair advantage and that's not allowed.

As a result of this, there has been a long discussion on this topic on 
the board list considering the possible options and in the end it was 
decided at the 2012-11-15 board meeting [3] to end/drop the project 
sponsorship program in order to try to qualify as a pure 501c3 
non-profit organization.

This is one of the changes that we will propose in our response to the 
IRS which is being worked on here [4].

For the full details of this discussion, please see the board mailing 
list archives and the board meeting minutes.

Daniel

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Sponsorship
[2] http://www.osgeo.org/sponsorship/opportunities
[3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2012-11-15
[4] 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/501c3_Application:_Questions_from_IRS,_September_2012