Folks suggesting it would have been better for GitHub to go the non-profit route do not understand how non-profits in free & open source software work.
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There were already non-profit organizations that could have been a provider for something like GitHub. But I think it's much harder than people realize.
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There's cultural inertia from certain segments of the FOSS community against anything that looks like commercialization of open source. There are resource constraints within NPOs themselves that can't be overcome by infusion of VC.
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There's tax law precedence that make certain kinds of revenue generating activities risky because every NPO fears losing its non-profit status.
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IRS rules for 501(c)(6)'s actually prohibit those orgs from engaging "in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit." I think this excludes most SaaS offerings which have been the most effective way of monetizing OSS to date.
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In this regard, I think 501(c)(3)s are better positioned to provide revenue-generating SaaS offerings. Lots of more traditional 501(c)(3)s do something similar by running a store or cafe. Worse case, the activity is unrelated to exempt purpose & the org has to pay taxes.
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