QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Wed 21st November 2007, 12:22am)
I almost filled out a 3949A on Mozilla Foundation 18 months ago. The recent news that their CEO, Ms. Mitchell Baker, is pulling in over $500,000 a year in salary and benefits has renewed my interest. See the bottom of
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html The other main person at Mozilla is Mitch Kapor, whom Jimbo identified as his hero in that NYT article the other day.
Mozilla Foundation's advance ruling period for 501c(3) ends on December 31. I'm wondering if there's a better alternative to the 3949A for them. I want the IRS to take a closer look at the Mozilla/Google relationship.
The evidence of Mozilla/Google being too close is about a thousand times more outrageous than the Wikia/Wikipedia connection. Everyone knows that the Mozilla/Google contract includes a non-disclosure section because Google always does that. But I contend that the IRS cannot make a reasonable final determination regarding 501c(3) without getting access to that contract.
Greg, are you aware of any names of people at IRS who do the 501c(3) stuff, who might be interested in a complaint letter about Mozilla Foundation. When I say "interested," I don't have a lot of faith in the IRS bureaucracy. All I want is for them to file it in the right place, so that my complaint will be read before the final determination is made on the 501c(3).
With Mozilla, about $13 million in taxes is at issue, plus their ability to solicit tax-deductible donations as a public charity. Any precedent set with Mozilla might be useful when Wikipedia's advance ruling period expires. I don't recall when Wikipedia's clock started. The advance ruling period is five years, with the first year being any portion of a year, no matter how short until the end of that year.
A 10% finders fees is available to anyone that is so inclined as to avail themselves of such important tax information. Go for it!
The issue at Wikia and Wikipedia is so simple, in my opinion.
At this point it is such a small number that to litigate it would eat up any of the gain.
The WMF does not have the funds to litigate anything. They would require a great deal of
"donations" for the work. Possible for a future favor?
However, and this is a big however, a merger of WP with one of the big sites could be a nice
transaction for someone in my line of work. (Not the music end of my business.)