Free as in Freedom

Episode 0x13: Torts and 1023s

Listen Later

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).

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.

      Send feedback and comments on the cast

      to .
      You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
      by following Conservancy on
      identi.ca and and Twitter.

      Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch

      of danlynch.org.
      Theme
      music written and performed
      by Mike Tarantino
      with Charlie Paxson on drums.

      The content
      of this
      audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
      under the Creative
      Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

      ...more
      View all episodesView all episodes
      Download on the App Store
      Free as in FreedomBy Free as in Freedom