Re: Donation to GNU Octave

[Ismael Núñez-Riboni]

> the tax deductibility of donations to FSFE is directly based on the rule
> that FSFE has to use all of these donations directly within FSFE. It is
> not possible to simply forward money to other organisations, especially
> not to organisations not approved as charitable in Germany.

Yes, I got the same answer from the same person. I will try to do what 
he suggests (which was also what Thomas Weber suggested me), i.e.

> to offer a support contract, an
> improvement in function, or any other service related to GNU Octave that
> can easily be declared as a business spending.

This might take, however, a very long time, because (I'm guessing only) 
a lot of people will be involved in authorizing such support contract, I 
guess perhaps a year of bureaucracy... This was also the reason why I 
was not so keen on that when I heard of it the first time. My idea was 
simply to immediately transfer some money with paypal and get the money 
back from my taxes next year. Fast and easy. Of course, I still can make 
such a paypal donation, though unfortunately it cannot be as large as it 
could be if I can deduce it from taxes... Therefore, I will try to get 
the support contract, I guess it is worth to try. On the other hand, I 
would also suggest to the Octave people trying to get an agreement with 
the the FSF Europe in the future, if this is possible. I think many 
people use GNU Octave in Europe and the foundation could profit from 
many tax deductible donations...

Cheers, Ismael