[Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way

[Michael R. Irwin]

Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>  
>
>>A stand out local feature is there is no state sales tax.   Which means 
>>by current U.S. Federal law governing transactions over the Internet.  
>>This means any corporate store owned and operated locally can be set up 
>>to move goods inside the U.S.  for revenue with no need to do the 
>>paperwork and collect sales taxes for 48 various U.S. states who do have 
>>a state sales tax.
>>
>>    
>>
>The sale of goods is a very minor concern for us.  Most businesses only 
>collect sales taxes from purchasers when the goods are delivered in 
>state.  For an organization with employees the lack of a state income 
>tax may be more interesting.  Florida does not have a state personal 
>income tax.
>  
>
Personal income tax does not affect the Wikimedia Foundation except 
indirectly as you note.   Sales tax would affect any revenue creating 
shipments of product.

My thoughts were that the Foundation might choose to sale its stable CDs 
directly if no partners choose to package the CDs and provide a small 
percentage back to the originating community to encourage future 
editions of its product.

I understand the final producer of the German Wikipedia was/is 
contributing back $1 Euro per CD sold to customers to the German Chapter. 

In large quantities, over  a thousand or more at a time, CDs can be 
produced and packaged ready for shipping for under a dollar a CD.   We 
probably need DVDs, maybe a couple.  Figure shipping and handling at 
$5.00 a unit assuming some kind of efficiently organized order handling 
database, accounting system, label printer, postage meter and mail 
drop.  The Foundation might sell the stable edition for twenty dollars 
plus shipping and handling to Windows users and earn up to $5.00 per 
customer while of course most linux distributions will eventally 
probably ship the FDL'ed product with their extended distributions over 
the internet somehow.

or we can continue to rely on donations.

either way is fine by me as long as the servers can stably service 
editors and users.


snip info on excise duties

>>Also various U.S. restraints regarding the export of regulated 
>>militarily applicable technologies as well as import regulations.
>>
>>    
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>What good of this sort are you planning to export?
>  
>
Human knowledge.

For example, a few years ago it was illegal to ship U.S. domestic 
versions of the animation package 3DStudio Max to Australia because it 
had distributed processing capabilities that the Pentagon wanted kept 
out of somebody's hands.  Presumably because if you can visualize what 
is happening effectively you can make good decisions and more 
effectively develop complex weapons systems.

Should the group that I was working with ever adopt the free software 
package "Art of Illusion" and turn in a patch to allow distributed 
processing then it might be a good idea to have a foreign mirror 
distributing the patch to avoid entanglements with the Pentagon for U.S. 
users and distributors of the free software.

Interestingly, AFAIK, nobody has bothered the BOINC supercomputer types 
so perhaps enforcement is tangled up in cross border trade.  Perhaps if 
no money changes hands the regulations have no teeth since they were 
written to address capitalists selling U.S. funded military technologies 
abroad.

I understand that there are such entanglements on various encryption 
technologies as well.

regards,
lazyquasar