This just should not be the top comment here. HN being HN, it's way, way too bent out of shape about the company name attached to the app store and not the minutiae of tax policy, which is what this is really about.

The app in question declares itself this way: AnkiDroid is a free, open-source flashcard app for Android with over 10 million installs, used worldwide for various purposes, primarily in medical education and language learning.

But it's registered as a 501(c)(6) non-profit, which is a designation for a "business league or industry association". This is what you use if you're a Chamber of Commerce, not a flash card app!

Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity, like most open source organizations, and it's just not. And the distinction is definitely impactful for tax purposes, something a payment processor is going to care about. Both organizations are exempt from tax themselves, but charitable donations are also deductable, and Anki isn't a charity. Likely Google isn't set up to record the distinction in an auditable way.

The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up. Or plausibly are running some kind of scam (e.g. they take the "donations" and then hand them over to a for-profit "member" company). They need to fix their registration if they want to take money from people, this isn't how you do it and this is surely not the only problem they'll have. Seriously, my Fraud Meter is dinging at about 19.6% here...

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kam 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Google is not the payment processor. This is about the app including a link to a donation page on opencollective.com.

Other 501(c)(6) organizations you might have heard of include the Linux Foundation and the Rust Foundation.

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ajross 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Do LF and Rust solicit individual donations via phone apps (or at all, really)?

Indeed, those are structured as corporate-funded consortiums of exactly the type you'd be very suspicious of if, say, your kernel or compiler logs started stuffing a donation link into the stream!

Note that GNU software does historically mention donations (not in the logs AFAIK), and indeed the FSF is a 501(c)(3).

	▲	jacobgkau an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Do LF and Rust solicit individual donations via phone apps (or at all, really)? "Phone apps" is irrelevant, because again, Anki was not taking donations via their app but rather via a link to OpenCollective, a separate website. So the remaining part of your question: > Do LF and Rust solicit individual donations (at all, really)? Yep, the Linux Foundation has a PayPal donate button (with a simple note to U.S. taxpayers that it's not deductible): https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate

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MatthiasPortzel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The 501(c)(6) in question is Open Source Collective, which is a “business league or industry association” dedicated to providing financial and administrative assistance to Open Source projects. Anki does not have lawyers, Open Source Collective does.

https://oscollective.org

This is an interesting rabbit hole if you bother to go down it, I encourage you to do some more research.

	▲	ajross 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Since you seem to have done the research, can you link some other iOS or Android apps that have been allowed to solicit donations for the Open Source Collective? Thanks. I mean, come on. Just read their page. They're not a charity, at all. They're a "fiscal host" (which is a weird term right out of the gate) designed to solicit donations on behalf of other projects. They're literally a payment processor in competition with Google and Apple, and taking a cut of their own. I mean, fine. They can do that. But that's not charity.

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KPGv2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up.

Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity and they have different owners, if you want to call it that.

Anki is owned by Nicholas Flint, a physician who sells med school-related decks online under the name AnKing, which controls Ankihub, which now controls Anki after the original founder (Damien Elmes) gave them control about six months ago.

Ankidroid is a non-profit project that arose when there was only an iPhone mobile version of Anki. Completely unrelated to Anki except that it was blessed by the original creator of Anki.

It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.

> Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity

No, no one is reading it thinking that Anki is a charity.

Anyway, when you are going to harp on about HN not caring about the minutiae of tax policy, you should make sure you understand that you're talking about two unrelated entities run by different people as if they were the same entity.

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ajross 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity

So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.

> It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.

"Just Some Nerd Programmers" don't, very obviously, have standing to solicit tax exempt donations. Rising further still...

I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path. They don't, on any such platform, and never have. There are specific carveouts allowed by the platform vendors for cases we all agree are valuable, like charitable donations. It's just really clear that Anki is playing games here and frankly I really doubt they qualify.

	▲	jacobgkau an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here. It's not... AnkiDroid was soliciting donations to AnkiDroid, via OpenCollective, which essentially "owns" them financially, for the purpose of soliciting donations. This is all explained very clearly in the linked GitHub issue: > AnkiDroid's donations go to Open Source Collective, a US non-profit which acts as our fiscal host. > AnkiDroid is the Anki client for Android, developed and maintained by volunteers. Nothing is sold in the app and our Open Collective is the sole source of funding for maintenance and development. AnkiDroid is independent from Anki, AnkiWeb, AnkiMobile, and AnkiHub. While some confusion is understandable, continuing to press on about your "Fraud Meter" just puts egg on your face when you're misunderstanding things through multiple replies explaining them to you.