Comment by btown

And in fact, imagine a large software corporation that wishes to be able to tax-deduct the portion of its profits that go into R&D, so it sets up an open-source non-profit to do all of that, with leadership that may have a financial stake in the corporation or be otherwise leveraged, and donates its corporate profits to the non-profit for its operations. This is almost exactly the definition of a fig-leaf charity. Imagine if Google spun off an Android Foundation and sent all of its core OS developers there, or even more so if Apple spun off a Swift Foundation to make an open-source compiler - even though they would be creating open-source software that could be used by other companies, it would not be in the spirit of the law that defines 501(c)(3), and much of the benefit would be derived by the parent corporation. So as much as my knee-jerk reaction is to say "government doesn't understand software," as a taxpayer I think it's perfectly reasonable for the IRS to be wary and have the BOLO in place.