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Might not be a bad idea to form a nonprofit -- thanks for this!! This is my first business venture so I was doing things very much "by the books" in the way of

Might not be a bad idea to form a nonprofit -- thanks for this!! This is my first business venture so I was doing things very much "by the books" in the way of establishing everything. As far as Immutable Coffee being a Stack Overflow replacement, I don't think that's accurate. Stack Overflow is already saturated enough that I don't think that there's any need for another website to exist for posterity's sake. Being able to google questions and answers doesn't feel like a very important goal, especially considering how quickly answers get invalidated with how fast programming moves anyway. As far as it being a side-gig for open source developers, I think that's an accurate assessment -- unfortunately. I did try very hard to do something that sets this site apart from traditional freelancing, and that's in the quick pace which a developer can answer questions. It doesn't take much time at all to log onto IC and really quickly claim a few questions and start helping people, in contrast with how long it takes to set up traditional freelance gigs. Thanks for believing in the mission! I have a few other ideas that are in the works with regards to this as well, that I'm just as excited to show HN.

mch82 7y ago
A nonprofit may be a great model for you and I love nonprofits. It’s been traditionally difficult for open source software organizations to get recognized as a 503c nonprofit (which allows people to make tax deductible donations). Things may have changed, but the IRS has struggled to decide if FOSS is truly volunteer work or is more of a tax shelter. A nonprofit can also be more overhead in terms of structure (you need a board), record keeping & accounting than an LLC (but not much more than a C-Corp). Unless you’re operating model depends on donations, it might be worth staying an LLC for a while. Check with a lawyer, accountant, or Stripe Atlas for real guidance. It’s been a while since I looked at firming a company.
thunderrabbit 7y ago
Stack Overflow needs a replacement because the community has become hostile to new users. I wonder if immutable.coffee could allow the asker (or by default) publish the answer transcript as an immutable record. Then the public can upvote it, which becomes a rating system for answers and the experts who gave the answers. The idea above might tend to only reward the experts who got there first, so that's something to think about. I want to allow the answers and experts to be rated because eventually someone will try to exploit the honesty of the system and say "yeah just download this .exe and it will fix your problem.."
breck 7y ago
I love the mission too. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to fund open source. GitHub Sponsors is an interesting thing to watch, as well as Patreon. Btw, there are a number of big companies that do the "talk to an expert" thing, such as GLG. Might be worth checking them out. Good luck!

mch82 7y ago

A nonprofit may be a great model for you and I love nonprofits. It’s been traditionally difficult for open source software organizations to get recognized as a 503c nonprofit (which allows people to make tax deductible donations). Things may have changed, but the IRS has struggled to decide if FOSS is truly volunteer work or is more of a tax shelter. A nonprofit can also be more overhead in terms of structure (you need a board), record keeping & accounting than an LLC (but not much more than a C-Corp). Unless you’re operating model depends on donations, it might be worth staying an LLC for a while. Check with a lawyer, accountant, or Stripe Atlas for real guidance. It’s been a while since I looked at firming a company.

thunderrabbit 7y ago

Stack Overflow needs a replacement because the community has become hostile to new users. I wonder if immutable.coffee could allow the asker (or by default) publish the answer transcript as an immutable record. Then the public can upvote it, which becomes a rating system for answers and the experts who gave the answers. The idea above might tend to only reward the experts who got there first, so that's something to think about. I want to allow the answers and experts to be rated because eventually someone will try to exploit the honesty of the system and say "yeah just download this .exe and it will fix your problem.."

breck 7y ago

I love the mission too. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to fund open source. GitHub Sponsors is an interesting thing to watch, as well as Patreon. Btw, there are a number of big companies that do the "talk to an expert" thing, such as GLG. Might be worth checking them out. Good luck!