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Comment by reverius42 | Hacker News Reader

Are you in the US? Do you report that revenue as personal income on your taxes? If yes, then I think it’s fair to call it profit (since you’re also presumably deducting expenses).

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Yes, sole proprietor, all revenue reported as personal income ... hence I consider it income.

It would be profit if I was organized as an LLC that agreed to pay me $X/year and took in $(X+Y) in revenue.

Like what’s your point really

Bikeshedding the meaning of profit.

Perhaps you think it is trivial. I don't. Open source has the potential to bring lots of benefits to society, but if coupled to a particular conception of what "profit" is and the way in which companies "doing" open source should relate to it, I believe that a lot of those benefits will be squandered.

Huh? “Profit” is not ambiguous, even in your business. It’s a value you calculate each year on Schedule C.

Positive income is profit. Negative income is loss.

I'd rather profit. :p

The Net Income you report on your Schedule C is your businesses profit whether you like to think of it that way or not. The opposite of this would be a loss where your business generates negative Net Income.

That's true if it is a sole proprietorship, but not if it is a corporation of some kind.

A corporation holds the profits (after expenses) on its books and they may (or may not) be distributed proportionally to shareholders. If it's not distributed, it is part of the value of the company.

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