CTI - Making a decision for glibc.

[Karen M. Sandler]

On 2026-01-29 10:20, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Carlos,
> 
> I have added Karen Sandler, the SFC Director, Zoë Kooyman, the FSF
> Director and Ian Kelling, the FSF president, sysadmin and of course
> Sourceware PLC member to the CC. I'll meet them this weekend at Fosdem
> and they might be able to help you with some of your questions about
> coordinating funding for hosting to help us with making a descision for
> glibc.

Yes, I would be happy to discuss this at FOSDEM.

Just a few small clarifications:

>> Those sponsors including AMD, arm, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, Oracle, Red 
>> Hat,
>> Qualcomm

I confirm that these companies have done sponsorships to SFC in the 
past, and we should be set up in almost all of their payment systems 
already.

>> Lastly, we could attempt to route more funding to either the FSF or
>> the SFC, but both are US charities. This means that the donations are
>> arms length, which means we can't say "this money shall be used for
>> X" and instead the charity decides what to do with the funds against
>> their charitable mission. Now, the distinction is germane because
>> while the FSF has been amazing at helping us run the GNU Toolchain
>> Fund, what is harder is convincing other large sponsors, that might
>> not have the same relationship, to give a fully charitable donation.
>> In the context of an LF ADF, we have a charter, and sponsors can be
>> fiscally accountable for the spend. The distinction is real and some
>> sponsors prefer it because they can say "We spent directly on X to
>> improve security." rather than "We donated to a charity."

Charities can definitely take in funds that are restricted for a 
particular purpose. While this would indeed subject to our charitable 
mission, that mission is to support free and open source software. We 
also couldn't use any funds to unduly benefit one company or individual 
(called "private inurement"), but it's hard to imagine any serious 
proposal here that would veer into that territory.

Companies regularly treat their contributions as business expenses 
rather than charitable donations, depending on their individual tax 
situations. Happy to explore all of this in further detail with you.

karen