I think you misunderstand me - a tax benefit would be paying the money to develop KiCad. It’s not about not paying taxes, it would be about using the incentive to not disadvantage any open source project where the money could go vs a commercial project. I certainly believe companies should pay taxes within the country where the revenue is raised. But businesses also want to reduce their tax paid by investing in tools/infrastructure where needed. But this feels off topic…
I am very abstract about the money stuff, but I believe that for any commercial entity in a lot of cases better invest money into open source, rather then to proprietary software. Moreover you’re able to share this with other peers, by using something like kickstarter, patreon etc.
This approach is also much more sustainable, in the long term global view.
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Artem,
Donations to KiCad can be made through CERN via the KiCad website. You can also pay a developer directly to implement the schematic Python extension. Please keep in mind that any development work should be done within the scope of the project in order for it to be accepted. As mentioned above, the schematic Python extension is on the version 6 roadmap. It most likely wont happen until after the new schematic file formats are implemented. Work on new file formats will begin as soon as the stable 5 version is released. I cannot say for sure when that will happen but we are nearing the version 5 feature freeze so I am hopeful the version 5 will be released by FOSDEM 2018. Feel free to contact me directly if you wish to discuss any donations.
Cheers,
Wayne
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[quote=“bobc, post:20, topic:1776”]
Personally, I think companies should damn well pay taxes, and not avoid/evade them, so I am afraid I have zero sympathy there!
[/quote]The point I think is that a company can expense something like a commercial CAD program. If they contribute to Kicad they should at least be able to get the same thing for that. Obviously this is a deep rabbit hole once you start crossing borders.
CERN may already provide enough that a separate organization would not be needed. Perhaps making the road map into a portal that allows contributers to more easily direct what they would like to see would help?
@stambaughw hello Mr. Stambaugh,
I wrote you a personal mail, but I want a receive confirmation. Just using this first time.
Thank you
A warning regarding BountySource. I tried using BountySource to put a bounty on a library issue, but encountered several problems. It seems that their access to github is restricted due to technical issues or possibly they are violating terms of service, I don’t know. Either way the problem has been outstanding for several weeks and has not been fixed. This gives me no confidence in BountySource.
Therefore I suggest avoiding BountySource, at least until they have resolved their issues with github.