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Comment by bflesch | Hacker News Reader

MY PERSONAL BOTTLENECK between S3 and GPU is my credit card and not some new cargo module by some already-rich AI engineer and a fancy marketing website that must've cost a couple hundred grand.

And if this module provides a benefit I'm sure it will find its way into our stack, just like PostgreSQL did. And PostgreSQL never had $22M to begin with - no shiny marketing, just technological skills.

The whole "donated by spiral" on the vortex.dev website also gives big tax write-off vibes.

IMO best case is that this will be a mongodb scenario, but with the current track record of tech grifters enshittifying everything they might find a creative new way.

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> The whole "donated by spiral" on the vortex.dev website also gives big tax write-off vibes.

I've never heard of this sort of OSS work being used as a tax write-off. Could someone please either clarify, or enlighten me?

Look at the website linked in the vortex website footer: https://lfprojects.org/ It has all the bells and whistles of using an expensive law firm.

I have no idea who exactly is behind this, but to me it does definitely not seem like a no-name open source genius, I assume it is some lucky AI grifter. They have two nicely designed, expensive marketing websites. They have all the legal documents for the parent LLC in Delaware.

The delaware corp "donates" the multi-million-worth tech to linux foundation, and uses it as tax write-off to offset gains from some other lucky AI grifter play the person did.

Just the chuzpe to self-compare yourself to something like PostgreSQL is what gets me. Why can't they just be rich and leave people doing actual work for the benefit of our common good be. No, they must make big blog posts claiming they are the next big thing after PostgreSQL.

So many red flags..

Believe it or not, this is how the Linux Foundation organizes itself. It's more legwork than something simpler like Apache Foundation.

Basically in the US you need a legally recognized entity to hold intellectual property. "Donating" the project involves setting up a "Series LLC" that is nested underneath the top-level Linux Foundation corporation, and donating the IP into it.

Checkout https://docs.linuxfoundation.org/lfx/project-control-center/... and ctrl-f "LF Projects, LLC"

Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I got it all mixed up.

But I think my argument still stands. Linux foundation is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit, see https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/bylaws

So you might still be able to do an "intellectual property transfer" to them and use it as a tax write-off. The "LF Projects LLC" is then the new owner, only the operating company who has the ongoing hosting contracts for the websites.

Edit: Not sure if a donation to 501(c)(6) can be used as write-off without using some other legal loopholes. Quick AI search told me that only 501(c)(3) can do the donation tax write-off thing.

I'm sure there are some good tax lawyers behind this, who am I to understand it as a mere mortal I am just jealous.

We don't get a tax write-off.

The motivation is to move the IP and trademark into a separate organization so it's no longer owned by Spiral. This means we can't re-license it later, we'd have to fork it, because the Vortex trademark and all that is controlled by LF.

Thanks for explaining it. All the best.

> The whole "donated by spiral" on the vortex.dev website also gives big tax write-off vibes.

Donated is the Linux Foundation terminology.

Sadly the last time I filed a tax return there was no way to itemize a Github repo. Alas.

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