[sudo-discuss] Incorporation

This was meant to get sent out after Wednesday's meeting. Sorry it took so long. In short, we are coming close to filing Sudoroom as a California corporation. We want to do this as consensually and horizontally as possible, but also soon. As in, the next few weeks. Let this e-mail thread be your official opportunity to lobby objections, concerns and desires. Here is some background for clarity, and some homework. PROFIT vs NON-PROFIT: this is the distinction that gets talked about most often, but actually seems to be the most remote/non-issue question right now. 501 (c3, c5, c*) is a chapter of the Federal IRC, meaning it ONLY relates to Federal income taxes. You ask the IRS to recognize you, and they take a few years to start letting you keep your money. But we're NOT AT THIS STAGE YET because legally we DON'T even EXIST YET. INCORPORATION: this is how you exist. It is not a federal process - you ask your U.S. State to recognize you. Each state does it a little differently. Generally the old traditional type of corporation is a C-Corp, and newer types are LLC and B-Corp. This is something we all need to learn more about! We need to decide the pros and cons of each type. That is our homework assignment #1. WRITING OUR ARTICLES: when we file papers we will have to submit Articles/Bylaws. This will be a legal document describing who we are and what the terms and rules of our incorporation are. It is OPEN-ENDED meaning very hackable but also intimidating. It's been proposed that we use Noisebridge's articles as a starting point and edit them to our liking to make them most Sudo-appropriate. It's on our wiki now: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Bylaws_in_progress Reading, understanding, and hacking at this document is homework assignment #2! MEMBERSHIP: observant readers will note incorporation implies there are "owners." We have to figure out once and for all how to decide membership. This is it, folks. Time for us all to step up and ask "who the fuck are we?" So, in summary, the next steps are: 1) Decide on LLC vs C vs B Corp 2) Write articles/bylaws to file with 3) who the fuck are we?