Who legally owns the Trisquel or 'Asociacion Trisquel'?
Hello everyone!
1)"A nonprofit organization (NPO), or non-business entity, is an organization which does not distribute its surplus income to owners or shareholders." (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_organization)
2)"Trisquel is a non-profit..." (https://trisquel.info/en/donate)
3)"I received a 500€ stipend on the months of October 2014 to May 2015 (4.000€)." Ruben said. (https://trisquel.info/en/new-cycle-what-we-achieved-and-whats-come)
The conclusion is that Ruben is not legally the owner of trisquel or 'Asociacion Trisquel'. So, who is?
Is it a 501(c)(3) organization?
Earning a salary is not the same as distributing a surplus income, otherwise non-profits could not have employees.
Thank you for your reply and also your tirelessly contribution to Free Software Society. and just for clarity i belief you deserve much more financial support than that and i was asking about legal stuff. actually i am a little bit confused because in my country law (Iran) the founders of a nonprofit organization and even their relatives can't have any transaction with their own organization (http://saman.mcls.gov.ir/fa/e/r/ff) (in case someone can read persian)
Imagine that the founder works for the org for 40 or 80 hours a week. And so, someone that starts a non-profit there must work for free because the organization is not allowed to pay them for services rendered to the organization? How does that person pay their own bills then? It seems they'd not be able to, if they wanted to work for the org full time.
Trisquel is based on Spain so I doubt it has a category that exists only on the United States law.
Whit that being said, non-profits organizations, at least here in Mexico, are able to have money and estate. They can even charge you for somethings they do for you. And they can pay a salary to the members. As long as it is not the objective of the organization to earn money.
For example, a non-profit can charge you for counsel or advice. But no member of the non-profit has the right for a part of the surplus, that this payment generated.
Even more if the non-profit is ceased, members won't get anything but what they contributed. They won't have a part of the surplus. Those things, by law, have to go to another non-profit.
I'm not a legal advisor.
1. Trisquel trademark is owned by Ruben.
2. Neither Trisquel GNU/Linux is owned by a single person or entity nor any other GNU/Linux distribution (like Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc). A lot of programmers have invested their time and life to develop many separate pieces of software which we glue together to make a GNU/Linux distribution. These separate packages have their own copyright holders but they have given us (or any other person) the right to modify, and redistribute their code under certain conditions (free-software licenses).
3. 'Asociacion Trisquel' is a nonprofit organization under Spanish law formed to handle legal aspects needed for development of this GNU/Linux distribution.
4. We cannot conclude who the owner of an organization is by considering who receives stipends from the organization. Nonprofit organizations can pay salary to their employees.
Thank you Salman.
> Nonprofit organizations can pay salary to their employees.
I agree, but can the founder and employee be the same person at the same time? (legally)
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.
I am a member!
I am also not a lawyer or an accountant.
I agree that paying salaries to employees that run a non-profit is no problem. If one of those employee's is the owner (and probably also either the President or CEO), there is nothing wrong.
The only potential problem is if the salary is unreasonable. The basis for choosing a salary is the same as in a for profit business. It is based on what the employee can do for the company--what their labor is worth. If the salary is greaterthan or equal to the surplus, then the whole surplus should go to the salary. If the salary is less than the surplus and the salary is then increased to absorb the surplus, that could be a problem (again, if the previous salary has already
been determined and if the surplus is more than a reasonable raise).
For example let us say that a 1,000,000 salary is appropriate: last year you pay yourself 50,000
and the surplus is then 0. Next year you pay yourself 100,000 and the surplus is then 0.
Next year you pay yourself 500,000 and the surplus is again 0. And so on. When the surplus before
your salary is deducted is 1,000,001 then the salary is 1,000,000 and the surplus is 1.
If next year the surplus is 3,000,000, then after the 1,000,000 salary is deducted as an expense,
the surplus is 2,000,000
In other words, the employee (whether owner or not) should get an appropriate salary
or be willing to work for less. I could see the argument that the owner should not be allowed
to make that decision as he/she is biased. However, in the USA we have the IRS and you do not
want to mess with them! They are incredibly powerful. They can throw you in jail
if you evade income taxes. This means the owner's income is known and others would sue the owner
for fraud if he/she could not justify the salary they are taking.
More often than not, an owner/founder of a non-profit is doing the work because they love the cause
and will tend to pay themselves less than they deserve (perhaps a reason why somebody
other than the owner should determine his/her salary!)
In this case, clearly Ruben was taking a big pay cut to work on Trisquel. $500/month if Ruben
spends 2 hours per day on the project then he is paying himself less than $10/hour.
A good programmer should make at least 5-10 times that much. Even if he took the whole 8,000 ($1000/month)
it would be much less than he should get paid. If he was doing it for the money
he would need to get paid much much more.
So, Thank you Ruben!!
The minimum wage in Spain is 9172.80€/year (756.70€/month), just to put in perspective how much a 500€/month stipend is.
I am a translator!
Minimum wage in Italy is "unemployment" and it seems to be of a great fashion here..
Well, unemployment seems to be of a great fashion among the OECD countries
SuperTramp83
Dammed lazy poeple!
So my Italian leader shoes are machine made by robots.
jbar
The USD conversion sums too 10,502.87 USD. per year,in my opinion, what Europeans appreciate the most is their universal health care.
The entitlement of UN-employment benefits In the USA varies from state,. Varies in amount per month, and it IS limited in duration. Normally, it will last 6 months, 235 dollars per week after that you are screw royally. Depending on the length of employment is a big factor for better money. Yet medical is not free, you have to paid taxes for that unemployment check. Still we pay taxes on it, we are not exempt. So don't complain Europeans.