The title of this story is just wrong. Nowhere -- other than at Slashdot itself, that is -- the "Intel employee" is even remotely identified as an Intel employee. This is just cheap -- is there another kind? -- sensationalism.
I know Slashdotters love conspiracy theories, but this one is not only far-fetched, but the title is purely misleading.
For the record, I work at Intel, although I have nothing to do with Classmate PC or OLPC. I just searched for the guy's name on our directory and he's either not an Intel employee or he uses another name (oh, here's another Slashdot theory!)
Some people dislike PDF, but truth be told, it is pretty portable. Anyone who is likely to need your presentation is probably going to be able to use PDF.
There are however times when you'll need to include some animations and whatnot. This will sound sacrilegious to many, but truth is that PowerPoint can be read by many more applications than OpenDocument.
In an email to the kde-cafe mailing list, Andreas Pour, the chairman of KDE League, explained the situation:
Subject: KDE League Clarifications From: Andreas Pour To: KDE Cafe Date: Today 12:50:40
Hi,
Some of you may have seen the story at http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=N ews&file=article&sid=249 , which is entitled "Delaware: KDE League, federally tax-exempt, is reinstated". The title is to the best of my knowledge a lie, and having investigated only the tax-exempt part of the "story" (I'm currently too busy to spend much time on responding to this kind of mud-slinging) most if not all of that appears to be a lie as well.
Although the story correctly notes that the League has been reinstated in good standing, it provides a number of new (apparent) lies. I called the Delaware Office of Corporate Divisions at 302-739-3073 (see http://www.state.de.us/corp/phoneinfo.htm). Here is what I found out. (BTW, I would *really* like to know who the "story" supposedly quoted from the Del. Sect. of State office, so that the accuracy of these quotes, which is extremely questionable based on my conversations with the corporate division, can be ascertained, and in the event someone actually made these statements, that they can be retracted and accurate information provided instead.)
The franchise tax was filed late this year - the recorded filing date is April 2, 2002, whereas the due date is March 1, 2002. B/c the payment was late, the office did impose a penalty and since the payment did not cover this penalty the office did suspend the corporation. This was done in error, since it was explained to me that the State's policy is that not-for-profit corporations do not need to pay late penalties. When this was discovered yesterday, due to an inquiry by either the League's law firm or someone else, I don't know, the penalty was reversed; this meant that the franchise tax had been paid in full and hence the corporation restored (retroactively) to good standing.
Then I started asking questions about the various other things that are claimed in the story re: 501(c)(3) status. To answer these questions I was transferred to Dot Savage, who told me that she made the good standing correction yesterday. I read her the quotes from the "story", and she insisted (a) that she had not said those things; (b) that nobody should have said those things; and (c) that they were factually incorrect. She made clear the obvious, that Delaware is concerned only with state corporate law and not with federal tax law (i.e., tax-exempt status). She added their computers have no way to track federal tax-exempt status and this is of no concern to them, and that certainly Delaware would not make a statement as to the tax-exempt status of a Delaware corporation. In particular, she could not understand the leading sentence to the story, which begins "The KDE League, Inc., filed papers purporting that it had a federal grant of tax-exempt nonprofit status", since Delaware does not track these issues and the application does not ask about federal tax status.
The "story" also has the following statement supposedly made by a Delaware official: "Indeed, because it is tax-exempt, she said, the KDE League had been listed as 'void' in error in the state's computer system and would now be reinstated." I asked Dot about this and she admitted that she was the one who restored the League status (due to the error) but she assured me that tax-exempt status had nothing to do with it - indeed, as I already mentioned, Delaware does not concern itself with tax-exempt status. Instead, it was restored b/c the League is "not-for-profit" (though referred to as a "non-profit" in the Certificate of Incorporation, but again this is a matter of state corporate law rather than of federal tax law).
As to the reference to 501(c)(3) in the League's Certificate of Incorporation, Article Eight, on page 3, provides:
"Upon the dissolution of the corporation or the winding up of its affairs, the assets of the corporation shall be distributed exclusively for charitable or educational purposes or to organizations which are then exempt from federal tax under Section 501(c)(3) or Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986."
While IIRC such a provision is *required* for a tax-exempt organization, having such a provision by no means makes an organization tax-exempt; we simply felt it a sensible approach to distributing assets if the League were dissolved. Tax exemption requires forms to be filed with the IRS requesting that status, and AFAIK such forms have never been filed on behalf of the League, and I certainly did not request anyone to file them. It is true that tax exemption was considered, in fact quite some time was spent on deciding this issue, but in the end it was decided in conjunction with the League's lawyers not to seek such status.
As to everything else, as I noted, I am doing an interview for Ofb.biz and I will address them then, but currently I have other pressing projects on my to-do list.
Regards,
Andreas Pour
Kde-cafe mailing list - Kde-cafe@ofb.biz http://ofb.biz/lists/listinfo.cg i/kde-cafe
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this mailinglist are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent KDE or the author's employer.
No one should be forced to use free/open source software just because it's free/open. It would be an enormous hipocrisy to not allow people to choose what they want to use and force them to use free software instead.
However, the government is a special market, one that should be entitled to a lot more control to the software it uses. So even though I don't think the government should be forced to use opensource software, at least it should be entitled to some warranties by the software vendor (whether the software is proprietary or not).
Because of matters of national security and sovereignty, governments should have some special rights to know what exactly the software does and how. Simply trusting the software developer is not enough, not when you are responsible for millions of people.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right! He's blogging for free on the web! It's obviously a conspiracy.
The title of this story is just wrong. Nowhere -- other than at Slashdot itself, that is -- the "Intel employee" is even remotely identified as an Intel employee. This is just cheap -- is there another kind? -- sensationalism.
;-)
I know Slashdotters love conspiracy theories, but this one is not only far-fetched, but the title is purely misleading.
For the record, I work at Intel, although I have nothing to do with Classmate PC or OLPC. I just searched for the guy's name on our directory and he's either not an Intel employee or he uses another name (oh, here's another Slashdot theory!)
Or I'm just lousy at searching for names
Some people dislike PDF, but truth be told, it is pretty portable. Anyone who is likely to need your presentation is probably going to be able to use PDF. There are however times when you'll need to include some animations and whatnot. This will sound sacrilegious to many, but truth is that PowerPoint can be read by many more applications than OpenDocument.
No one should be forced to use free/open source software just because it's free/open. It would be an enormous hipocrisy to not allow people to choose what they want to use and force them to use free software instead.
However, the government is a special market, one that should be entitled to a lot more control to the software it uses. So even though I don't think the government should be forced to use opensource software, at least it should be entitled to some warranties by the software vendor (whether the software is proprietary or not).
Because of matters of national security and sovereignty, governments should have some special rights to know what exactly the software does and how. Simply trusting the software developer is not enough, not when you are responsible for millions of people.