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78 Comments
- gamebittk, on 11/20/2008, -2/+114No, no, no... The Mozilla Foundation was audited by the IRS, but nothing about them loosing their non-profit status is official. The Digg title makes the change of status sound absolute.
"...it received the advance ruling as a public benefit corporation"
Public benefit?.. People are getting rich while avoiding paying proper taxes. But Mozilla does release all of their products for free, and they do open up lots of code... - DeathRay2K, on 11/20/2008, -0/+88Buried as inaccurate. The title is misleading, and the article is biased.
- theaceoffire, on 11/20/2008, -0/+35So I guess if you give too much money to a non-profit organization, then they become a for-profit organization?
Shouldn't we count the Church as for-profit then?
Or are they just saying that Mozilla should donate more money to 3rd party developers? - neutronphaser, on 11/20/2008, -0/+22its
- Cglass, on 11/20/2008, -0/+22FTA "That’s peanuts, and wouldn’t change much at Mozilla—except for the fact that it is pretending to be a non-profit foundation when everyone knows it is a charitable arm of Google."
The author of this article is an idiot, full stop. - kephas, on 11/20/2008, -0/+18As others have said, the submission title is dramatic and the article is biased. Saying things like, "...it is pretending to be a non-profit foundation when everyone knows it is a charitable arm of Google," is not exactly fair since Mozilla seems to try very hard to stay within the law in terms of being a non-profit. And it's not like they don't give away a great product for free...
- censormagnet, on 11/20/2008, -1/+171. give away free browser
2. ???
3. PROFIT! - inactive, on 11/20/2008, -0/+14They should change to a religious organization and get their priviliges back.
- inactive, on 11/20/2008, -1/+15The only real difference between a profit and non-profit corporation is that the non-profit corporation does not pay dividends to shareholders, as there are no shareholders (only a board of trustees). All of the "profit" goes back into the organization.
- Kishoba, on 11/20/2008, -0/+12Do you realize what it costs to support the amount of bandwidth (alone) a site like Wikipedia generates?
- centran, on 11/20/2008, -0/+12Most people have no clue what it takes to be a non-profit. There are different types of non-profits but lets talk about charities. Most of the money goes into paying the workers salary and to whoever the charity benefits. Some of the money goes into operational costs. The reason it is called non-profit is because any money the organization "makes"(profits) should go to whoever/whatever the charity benefits.
Now the complicated ***** comes in with peoples salaries and operational costs. This is where you get in trouble with the IRS. To be a non-profit means you are exempt from certain taxes. However, to get and maintain that status then the IRS are going to get audit you.
They are going to be looking at things like does this person really deserve that salary? Was it necessary to buy that fancy new copier? Did the organization sell anything off and was it considered a capital gain? There are tons and tons of financials that need to be gone through.
It is much harder to run a non-profit because anything that has to deal with money needs be checked, double checked and approved. You can not simply say well we need to buy this to efficiently run this organization and we have the money to do so. Instead you need to think... are we allowed to have this? - MasterNielsen, on 11/20/2008, -0/+12The foundation operates as a non-profit which simply means that they are allowed to generate revenue but they must spend it all on projects or charities thus not making any profit; Like Wikipedia.
- stoanhart, on 11/20/2008, -1/+12I thought they had branched into two entities, a corporation and a non-profit, a while back for this exact reason.
- inactive, on 11/20/2008, -1/+11IRS believe Scientology deserves it more then mozilla -_-
- MasterNielsen, on 11/20/2008, -0/+9Yup they spend almost evey last cent, check their financial reports on the Wikimedia Foundation site.
- Incidents, on 11/20/2008, -3/+12You should have capitalized the word Digg. Grammar fail.
- Forky, on 11/20/2008, -0/+8For showing extra support for a piece of software that they use everyday?
- ubuwalker31, on 11/20/2008, -0/+7First of all, Mozilla would not lose its Non-Profit or Tax-Exempt status. It would just be taxed on its "unrelated business income".
From irs.gov:
"Unrelated business income is 1) income from a trade or business, 2) regularly carried on, 3) that is not substantially related to the charitable, educational, or other purpose that is the basis of the organization's exemption.
To determine if a business activity is substantially related requires examining the relationship between the activities that generate income and the accomplishment of the organization's exempt purpose. Trade or business is related to exempt purposes, in the statutory sense, only when the conduct of the business activities has causal relationship to achieving exempt purposes (other than through the production of income). The causal relationship must be substantial. The activities that generate the income must contribute importantly to accomplishing the organization's exempt purposes to be substantially related."
So, the question is quite clear: Are search-related royalties from Google substantially related to Mozilla's non-profit purpose?
I think the answer is not so clear...but it seems to me that earning advertising revenue is one of the only ways for a free software company to make any money. Non-profits like the YMCA sell advertising all the time...so why shouldn't Mozilla? - TheWindBlows, on 11/20/2008, -1/+8This is just their 2007 statistics.
- firstpost, on 11/20/2008, -0/+7So in layman's terms:
A non-profit organization does not have profit as its main goal, as a commercial organization does. - Pfkninenines, on 11/20/2008, -2/+9A non-profit organization (abbreviated "NPO", also "not-for-profit") is a legally constituted organization whose objective is to support or engage in activities of public or private interest without any commercial or monetary profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_organizati ... - curiousgrge, on 11/20/2008, -0/+7And yet somehow Scientology is still considered a non-profit.
- blaze03, on 11/20/2008, -2/+8Can someone explain for us retards what exactly it means to be "non-profit"?
- crazyhorse13, on 11/20/2008, -2/+8Neither-nor, my friend. Neither-nor.
- crazyhorse13, on 11/20/2008, -6/+12It's not that big of a typo...
- Drahkar, on 11/20/2008, -0/+6A bigger typo is the whole aspect of the title where he makes it sound like they are assured to lose their Non-Profit status. Its just being investigated to make sure they are adhering to the original filing for their non-profit status. that's not 'Losing' anything.
- exeprime, on 11/20/2008, -0/+5Mozilla "the charitable arm" of Google? What's the deal with Chrome then?
This article is pure rubbish, and Erick Schonfeld is a turd sandwich. - inactive, on 11/20/2008, -0/+5They can make a "profit" it just has to go back into it's primary activities.
"While they are able to earn a profit, more accurately called a surplus, such earnings are retained by the organization for its future provision of programs and services, and are not owned by nor distributed to individuals or stake-holders" -wikipedia - TLTD, on 11/20/2008, -3/+7Everyone who uses Mozilla should get a $50 gift card or something. Wait make that $100.
- FolkTheory, on 11/20/2008, -1/+44. pay 100,000 to IRS
- angrykeyboarder, on 11/20/2008, -0/+3Dear Sanduu , what are you basing your headline on?
- spyderfreek2k, on 11/20/2008, -0/+3It is there fiscal year stats. If the year started in 2007, it could have ended in June 08 and it still would have been a 2007 Revenue.
- synapz, on 11/20/2008, -4/+7Taxes are never proper. They're theft.
- InfernoX, on 11/20/2008, -0/+3Look at the title at the top of the page, notice how digg is not capitalized?
- r3zonance, on 11/20/2008, -0/+3Non-profit means that any money made remains in the organisation, i.e. no shareholders (aren't any), or founders/owners MAKE any money.
- MasterNielsen, on 11/20/2008, -0/+3Exactly, making profit is not a organization objective.
- DeathRay2K, on 11/20/2008, -1/+4It's not the amount of money that's the problem, it's how they made it. Because they made money from a business deal with Google, they might have to be considered a business.
- hamishmacdonald, on 11/20/2008, -0/+2What? "It's" is a contraction of "it" and "is". There's nothing arbitrary about that, no "choose what you like" menu for the language -- any more than you could code C++ any way you felt like then blame others when your code doesn't work on the their end. Carelessly introducing mistakes is not correct just because you assert that it is.
Sloppy Internet headlines discredit the content that follows them and entrench traditional media's insistence that the Web is an outlet for amateurs. - mypetridish, on 11/20/2008, -0/+2but they still make a profit then? i see2.
so the workers, the CEOs, the trustees, they all still get paid for their work as salary? do they get income-taxed? - DeathRay2K, on 11/20/2008, -0/+2I dugg you down for your arrogance.
- agentlame, on 11/21/2008, -0/+2@synapz
You, my friend, have a deep misunderstanding of how the world works. - niczar, on 11/20/2008, -1/+3You are very confused as to the meaning of the word "profit." And the word "donations", too. I just gave €75 to Wikipedia; that was a bona-fide donation, no need for quotation marks around it. They didn't force me to do it, and I do not expect anything directly in return. In fact, I gave it in part to you, too, since you get to use WP for free.
- sodade, on 11/20/2008, -1/+3Then stop using public services.
Didn't think so... - rxbudian, on 11/20/2008, -0/+1Damn... I wish I had that problem...
- SPRFRKR, on 11/21/2008, -0/+1He's got a point though...
- 7aji, on 11/21/2008, -0/+1give them a break! They make the best web browser out there. They will probably spend it on more research for new products.
- niczar, on 11/21/2008, -0/+1@mypetridish: the organization is not-for-profit, not the employees. Therefore they do pay taxes on their salaries
- jwolcott, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1The extra money. Firefox is doing to IE what IE did to Navigator, except by being a better browser and not by abusing a monopoly.
- soogy, on 11/20/2008, -0/+1This article doesn't really make much sense. They're being audited, which is common. Note that Mozilla Firefox, from which they earn most of their revenue, is a product of Mozilla Corp -- a FOR-PROFIT subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation.
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