On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 12:08:24AM -0400, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> When we wrote the bylaws we did not have any monetary assets. The only
> asset we had was the code itself. The clause was meant to give the code
> back to the original members, so that it would not get lost and someone
> would retain ownership. Now that we have some money, we can clarify that
> this refers only to the code (or remove it alltogether) and specify a
> charity that will receive our money, or another Open Source project.

Isn't the code exactly the asset that's under discussion? It's my
understanding that on dissolution of a 501(c) organization, all of its
assets must go to other tax-exempt organizations (or to the government,
which will decide how to dispose of the assets). Not all *monetary*
assets, but all assets. While I don't know enough about tax law to know
whether or not intellectual property assets are included in this
requirement, I am pretty sure that one can donate IP to a tax-exempt
organization and get a tax deduction for it, so at some level the IRS
assigns value to IP.
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