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Free as in Freedom

Episode 0x13: Torts and 1023s

5 July 2011

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Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the USAmerican legal system in regard to torts, and the current delays from the USA IRS on 501(c)(3) non-profit applications (i.e., Form 1023s).

This show was released on Tuesday 5 July 2011; its running time is 00:39:49.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:48)

Billy Crook wrote in to make a good joke about 0x12 being the last episode available in other RSS feeds. (Don't forget the right RSS feed is at faif.us.)
Karen calls tortes delicious pastries.
Bradley saw a documentary called Hot Coffee, which discussed the idea of tort deform. (03:35, 05:45)
Bradley mentioned that Karl Rove, George W. Bush's political operative, was involved in early tort “reform”. (06:54)
Brendan Scott is a lawyer in Australia, who has published about GPL enforcement and writes a blog about legal issues related to Open Source and Free Software (11:58)

Segment 1 (12:50)

Bradley talked about 501(c)(3) status and Form 1023s in his interview on FLOSS weekly. (13:50)
Around 2010, applications for Free Software non-profits' 501(c)(3) status started to be delayed, according to independent evidence that Karen and Bradley have collected from the IRS and the community of non-profits. (16:20)
Form 1023s are the applications you file with the IRS (17:15)
As far as we know, no applications have been refused yet for a Free Software non-profit, but there seem to be extremely long delays. (18:40)
Bradley mentioned a blog post from the Executive Director of CASH Music, where he talked about their Form 1023 being delayed. (19:10)
Karen has confirmed with IRS agents that this process of applications does not impact existing non-profits currently. (21:00)
Bradley pointed out that COBOL jobs are still very prevalent. Bradley even found a website dedicated only to COBOL jobs. (36:18)
After we recorded, Simon Phipps posted a blog post quoting Bradley about the issue

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Tags: faif, non-profit, tort, Form 1023

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