Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

Hi Liam,

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Liam R. E. Quin <liam holoweb net> wrote:

On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 21:52 +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
>
> I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think
> it's
> probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a
> wee bit
> excessive. ;-)

It doesn't sound like a lot of money to me. It's probably not enough
to fight a single trademark case in court in the US - you'd need two
or three times as much money [1, 2].

Just as well Groupon didn't catch on to that before they conceded then ;-)

GNOME originally registered as a public benefit cooperation (i.e. a charity) so our income must be substantially related to GNOME's exempt purposes or it could be taxable and as you can see $100,000 would normally amount to a significant chunk of our average annual income.[1] So, I still agree with Tobias and I also agree with everything Cosimo has said, on this: There really ought to be some compelling reason for us to want to sit on that kind of money rather than invest it back into the project.

I'll leave it there, so the rest of the candidates can answer.

Magdalen

[1] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?agency_id=1&license_id=1043846&