Yorba Foundation

Last updated

Yorba Foundation
FoundedFebruary 17, 2009;14 years ago (2009-02-17) [1]
FounderAdam Dingle
DissolvedOctober 25, 2015;8 years ago (2015-10-25)
TypeCommunity
Focus Office software
Location
Products Shotwell, Geary
Staff
5
Website www.yorba.org
twitter.com/yorba_org (Twitter)

Yorba Foundation was a non-profit software group based in San Francisco, [2] and founded by Adam Dingle wanting to bring first class software to the open source community. This organization had been created to answer people thinking open source brings hard to use, clunky and low-quality software usable only by hackers.

Contents

The company was made of 5 employees: Jim Nelson (coder and executive director), Adam Dingle (founder), Charles Lindsay, Eric Gregory and Nate Lillich (software engineers). [3] [4] [5]

History

In December 2009, Yorba Foundation applied to get the 501(c)(3) status. [6] After some requests for clarification by IRS in June 23, 2010 and September 14, 2010. [6] On May 22, 2014, Yorba's nonprofit status was denied. [6] The IRS explained that the organization makes software that can be used by any person for any purpose, and not just for a specific community. Therefore, Yorba cannot be considered as a charity even though the Apache Foundation, with exactly the same purpose, was considered a nonprofit. [7] Although this status would have helped, according to Jim Nelson, Yorba's existence didn't hinge on it. [6]

On October 31, 2013, Yorba moved from San Francisco's Mission District to its Financial District. [8] [9] [10] [11]

By the end of April 2015, the last Yorba employee, Jim Nelson, left the foundation. [12] The stated reason for the closure is lack of financially sustainability: funding ran out, and donations did not match expenses. Even if Yorba had received the 501(c)(3) status allowing it to be tax exempt, it's not likely to have helped much. [13]

On October 25, 2015, the following message was posted on their webpage without any further explanation:

Yorba was a non-profit free software group based in San Francisco that was active from 2009 until early 2015

May 2016 marked the beginning of the formal dissolution of the organization [14] with the complete dissolution happening later that year. [15]

In May 2016, Yorba reassigned the copyright of all their software to the Software Freedom Conservancy except for their California calendar application which will be assigned in the near future due to an oversight on Yorba's part. [14] [16]

Main developments

Shotwell

Shotwell is an image manager for the GNOME 3 desktop, which features:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Evolution</span> Personal information manager software and workgroup information management tool for GNOME

GNOME Evolution is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. It combines e-mail, address book, calendar, task list and note-taking features. Its user interface and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

Xiph.Org Foundation is a nonprofit organization that produces free multimedia formats and software tools. It focuses on the Ogg family of formats, the most successful of which has been Vorbis, an open and freely licensed audio format and codec designed to compete with the patented WMA, MP3 and AAC. As of 2013, development work was focused on Daala, an open and patent-free video format and codec designed to compete with VP9 and the patented High Efficiency Video Coding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X.Org Foundation</span> Nonprofit organization

The X.Org Foundation is a non-profit corporation chartered to research, develop, support, organize, administrate, standardize, promote, and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack. This includes, but is not limited to, the following projects: DRM, Mesa 3D, Wayland and the X Window System and its primary implementation, the X.Org Server.

A 501(c) organization is a nonprofit organization in the federal law of the United States according to Internal Revenue Code and is one of over 29 types of nonprofit organizations exempt from some federal income taxes. Sections 503 through 505 set out the requirements for obtaining such exemptions. Many states refer to Section 501(c) for definitions of organizations exempt from state taxation as well. 501(c) organizations can receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, and unions.

GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Orinda, California, United States, which works to coordinate the efforts in the GNOME project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NatureServe</span> American non-profit organization

NatureServe, Inc. is a non-profit organization based in Arlington County, Virginia, US, that provides proprietary wildlife conservation-related data, tools, and services to private and government clients, partner organizations, and the public. NatureServe reports being "headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with regional offices in four U.S. locations and in Canada." In calendar year 2011 they reported having 86 employees, 6 volunteers, and 15 independent officers.

A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Form 990</span> United States Internal Revenue Service form

Form 990 is a United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) form that provides the public with financial information about a nonprofit organization. It is also used by government agencies to prevent organizations from abusing their tax-exempt status. Certain nonprofits have more comprehensive reporting requirements, such as hospitals and other healthcare organizations.

Candid is an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies. In 2016, its database provided information on 2.5 million organizations. It is the product of the February 2019 merger of GuideStar with Foundation Center.

Yorba may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shotwell (software)</span> Free software image organizer

Shotwell is an image organizer designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. In 2010, it replaced F-Spot as the standard image tool for several GNOME-based Linux distributions, including Fedora in version 13 and Ubuntu in its 10.10 Maverick Meerkat release.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software Freedom Conservancy</span> Non-profit organization

Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is an organization that provides a non-profit home and infrastructure support for free and open source software projects. The organization was established in 2006, and as of June 2022, had over 40 member projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Sandler</span>

Karen Sandler is the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, former executive director of the GNOME Foundation, an attorney, and former general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. She holds an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven.

The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a non-profit consortium of nonprofit journalism organizations. The organization promotes nonprofit investigative and public service journalism by supporting its members and the nonprofit news industry as a whole.

LocalWiki is a collaborative project that aims to collect and open the world's local knowledge. The LocalWiki project was founded by DavisWiki creators Mike Ivanov and Philip Neustrom and is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. LocalWiki is both the name of the project and the software that runs the project's websites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ubuntu GNOME</span> Linux distribution

Ubuntu GNOME is a discontinued Linux distribution, distributed as free and open-source software. It used a pure GNOME 3 desktop environment with GNOME Shell, rather than the Unity graphical shell. Starting with version 13.04 it became an official "flavour" of the Ubuntu operating system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki Education Foundation</span> Nonprofit organization

The Wiki Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. It runs the Wikipedia Education Program, which promotes the integration of Wikipedia into coursework by educators in Canada and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outreachy</span> Open source software internship program for marginalized people

Outreachy (previously the Free and Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women) is a program that organizes three-month paid internships with free and open-source software projects for people who are typically underrepresented in those projects. The program is organized by the Software Freedom Conservancy and was formerly organized by The GNOME Project and the GNOME Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geary (e-mail client)</span> Open-source email client

Geary is a free and open-source email client written in Vala and based on WebKitGTK. Although since adopted by the GNOME project, it originally was developed by the Yorba Foundation. The purpose of this e-mail client, according to Adam Dingle, Yorba founder, was to bring back users from online webmails to a faster and easier to use desktop application.

References

  1. ↑ "IRS response to 501(C)(3) Yorba Foundation application" (PDF). Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Donate to Yorba". Archived from the original on September 20, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  3. ↑ "YORBA AT GUADEC, A CORUÑA" . Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Geary: a beautiful modern open-source email client". YouTube . Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  5. ↑ "AUTHORS". GitHub . Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "THE NEW 501(C)(3) AND THE FUTURE OF FREE SOFTWARE IN THE UNITED STATES" . Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  7. ↑ "Are open source foundations nonprofits? The IRS says no". July 8, 2014. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  8. ↑ "OCTOBER MISCELLANY" . Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Contact Us | Yorba". Archived from the original on March 25, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Contact Us | Yorba". Archived from the original on February 17, 2014.
  11. ↑ "Donate to Yorba". yorba.org. Archived from the original on September 20, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  12. ↑ After a direct contact with Adam Dingle
  13. ↑ "Re: Yorba status". November 16, 2015. Retrieved November 17, 2015.
  14. 1 2 "Yorba Assigns Shotwell and Geary Copyrights to Software Freedom Conservancy". May 10, 2016. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Re: Yorba status – Geary article". June 26, 2016. Retrieved July 5, 2016.
  16. ↑ "Re: Yorba status – Geary article". June 26, 2016. Retrieved July 5, 2016.
  17. 1 2 3 "Apps/Shotwell - GNOME Wiki!". wiki.gnome.org. Retrieved November 29, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.