OVH monitors customers' servers and investigates if they stop responding to pings, unless you opt out of this. I'm guessing they were looking at this system to make sure all their customers' machines came online again after the incident.
In Canada, we have a debit card network called Interac and can use it to send an "e-Transfer" to anyone else with a Canadian bank account using nothing more than their email address or phone number + a shared secret to claim the payment. Some number of free e-Transfers per month is typically included with bank accounts.
Interac solved the P2P payments problem for every social group that I'm in there.
This is completely off topic from this thread, but one way to easily cut down on spam (that would break many email senders today) would be to require that a mail server can only send email for a domain you own. Yes, I'm familiar with DKIM and similar tools, but they don't go far enough.
Not all hosts are US-based, though; some hosts in other countries prefer to get a court order in their own jurisdiction before taking action against a customer.
100% agree. Running Seafile for ~1.5 years with >100GB synced and ~5 users. Couldn't be happier. The sync-part just works.
Big advantages over own/nextcloud:
* Easy updates that work. When I tried owncloud, nearly every update I had to fiddle around with the database to make it work. Didn't have a single problem when updating Seafile so far.
* Block-level sync. Meaning if you change one line in a 10MB file, it will only update that part. Last time I checked, owncloud did not support this.
* Sync just works. When I tried owncloud, folders disappeared, folders were duplicated. Never had this problem with Seafile.
I installed Seafile and ran it for a while, but what I didn't like is that in order to get to the file on the server, I had to use fuse and, well, I just didn't want to have to do that. Picky, I get it, but we all have preferences.
I've run ownCloud for some time now and I don't see the reliability issues that some people claim. I am running it on TS140 and not something small like a RPi, so maybe that makes the difference.
I've run ownCloud for about half a year to sync my dev files to a hosted server. For a while, everything was great. What happened for me at least was if I was saving a project while ownCloud was syncing, there was a chance of it messing up and then requiring a full resync of my dev folder (a not insignificant amount of data).
The first time it happened I shrugged it off as a fluke. The second time I became gunshy and would disable it any time I was working, then enable it after. Not a big inconvenience but a hassle and something I had to remember. After a while I stopped using it. YMMV, of course.
That's exactly what a nonprofit is. Nonprofits are corporations like any other, with a few key differences:
- Instead of shareholders, nonprofits have members. Members don't own the corporation (no one does) but control it insofar that they hire-and-fire its directors.
- Memberships normally can't be sold, and nonprofits have no equivalent to dividends.
- There are stronger conflict-of-interest protections, preventing officers from signing cheques to themselves or otherwise using the corporation's resources for their personal benefit - at least without someone else's approval.
A typical setup for nonprofits is to tie memberships to being a director, so that current board members choose their own successors. This is known as a "self-perpetuating board".
IIRC non-profits can't make and keep profits.
Corps can, hence Mozilla Corp. They can keep profits around in order to.. like, purchase Pocket, or simply pay employees later when Mozilla makes less profit, or whatever else.
These things are hard or maybe impossible in a non-profit (IANAL/correct me if I'm wrong)
Non-profits can make surplus revenues over costs and retain them; they can't return profits to shareholders or other particular beneficiaries.
Certain classes of nonprofits are restricted from certain business activities, or limited to certain activities. E.g., charities (501c3 nonprofits) must be organized and operated exclusively for purposes on an list of charitable purposes.
Yes, nonprofits can charge money and hold onto it. What they can't do is distribute it to shareholders. Many universities are nonprofits, and they hold on to millions or billions of dollars. Nonprofits can also acquire companies, etc.
The terms "nonprofit" and "not-for-profit" are unfortunate misnomers. Like any other company, nonprofits can offer gainful employment and will eventually bankrupt if they never turn a profit.
AFAIK, Mozilla has the structure they do because the IRS frowns upon charities (which is shorthand for "tax-exempt corporation") engaging in business-like activities but is fine with charities owning for-profit companies as a source of income (and like any shareholder can do, direct the for-profit company to benefit its owner).
Regional differences may be relevant here: in Canada, you can incorporate a nonprofit corporation and later apply for charity status (which restricts the company's possible activities in exchange for a 0% income tax rate) but it's completely optional.
In the US, on the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, one has to establish a for-profit entity first and then apply to the IRS to recognize it as a charity (which is a lengthy process). The words "charity" and "nonprofit" are interchangeable in the US for that reason.
If the concept of a non-charitable nonprofit exists in your jurisdiction, you can get the benefits of a nonprofit structure (ie. no owners) without restricting the company's activities, minus tax exemption and being able to issue tax receipts.
For context: I founded a non-charitable nonprofit in Canada; I'm not super familiar with the US side of things so I'm happy to be corrected.
> in Canada, you can incorporate a nonprofit corporation and later apply for charity status
The US works similarly. You incorporate as a nonprofit, but you have to separately apply for tax-exempt status afterwards. If you don't, you're a nonprofit without the benefits of being tax-exempt.
I'm in the same boat. My self-taught experience inspired me to pursue a CS degree. The degree did put me in a serendipitous position that led to a number of great industry opportunities but personal growth was my main reason for starting it.
FWIW, I'm studying in Canada and paying my way through school with internships.
There's no equivalent to LLC's in Canada so you'll need to create a corporation up here. You can incorporate in the federal jurisdiction or a provincial one; you'll want to read the relevant acts that you'd be incorporating under to figure out the differences. BC corporations, for example, require at least one director to be a BC resident; federal for-profit corporations, on the other hand, require 25% of the board to be Canadian citizens.
I also went through the Canada Business Corporations Act and Not-for-profit Corporations Act a few times; they lay out the bureaucratic details you need to be aware of.
The most awkward part was opening a US-based bank account afterward; BMO Harris was one of very few US banks I came across that was willing to talk shop with a Canadian company (I'd love to hear if anyone knows of any other foreign company-friendly US banks).
If you name yourself as the only director and shareholder (or voting member, in the case of a nonprofit), you still have to hold board and shareholder/member meetings but they'll be very straightforward since you'll be their only attendee. _Definitely_ consult with a lawyer if you're contemplating a voting structure that extends beyond yourself or the directors.
For creating a nonprofit in particular, you may be able to get pro-bono legal advice through an organization like Access Probono (http://accessprobono.ca). Corporations Canada also offers a super-useful By-law Builder tool which gives you "sane defaults" for the corporation's structure: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cd-dgc.nsf/eng/h_cs04734.html
I've been reading up about this - why do companies setup provincial corps when they could be setting up federal corps (as in, it costs $100 more and there seem to be no downsides last I checked)?
Also, how do you manage taxes? (especially for revenue earned from other countries for example).
I see federal incorporation as a "sane default" but this is what I know that favours provincial incorporation:
- The bureaucratic details differ between the various provincial jurisdictions and the federal one (like the one I mentioned with requirements for the makeup of the board). This could make a particular province's corporate rules a better fit for your business than the federal ones.
- That provincial incorporation is cheaper can matter for local businesses that have no intention of expanding nationally.
- Some provinces may require corporations from other jurisdictions (other provinces or the federal jurisdiction) to "register extraprovincially" to operate there, at extra cost. This is avoided by incorporating locally.
- If your business name is already taken by a provincial corporation in another province, you may have an easier time creating a provincial corporation by the same name than a federal one.
*
> obligatory "I'm not an accountant or tax expert" note
Taxes... I'm still figuring those out but CRA allows corporations to file in USD [1]. To the best of my knowledge, a Canadian corporation that only has Canada-resident employees and shareholders, and doesn't own property or servers in other countries, only has to deal with Canadian taxes. Expect to fill out a few W-8BEN-E forms to assert this. Depending on what your company does, you may have to charge your Canadian users sales tax.
American bank accounts are the only way to get USD out of a PayPal account; PayPal will refuse to send anything but CAD to a Canadian bank account, regardless of what currency the account holds.
Since my organization mainly operates with USD, and many of its paying users really like PayPal, a US bank account was a necessity.
As for gotchas... be aware that directors cannot hire-and-fire each other unless they also happen to be the corporation's voting members or hold its voting shares. This might be weird to wrap your mind around if you've only been a sole proprietor before, and is why I advise consulting with a lawyer if you plan to split up control.
I'll vouch for OVH as a great choice - I've been a customer there for several years. Their phone support is awesome and you get a ton of hardware and bandwidth for your dollar.
Nope - it is a fee for money that travels between PayPal users in different countries. It's about 1% for Canadian accounts, depending on the payment's source or destination [1].
Source: am an OVH customer