---------- Forwarded message ---------- ________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 05:23:19 -0800 (PST) From: Sagar Behere sagar_behere@yahoo.com Subject: money matters
Hi all,
I am talking on behalf of NashLUG, the Nashik Linux Users Group
We are a fledgling linux users group and to spread the Linux word around, we often go to nearby colleges and hold seminars on various aspects of GNU and linux.
In doing these seminars, we incur some costs and so far the group members have been bearing this personally.
We have this idea of charging the seminar members some nominal entry fee, somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 rupees. In these seminars, we'd also be distributing copies of knoppix or similar stuff.
Which brings us to the point in question. During one of our discussions, a question came up as to whether we, a bunch of enthusiasts, were authorised to collect money. We do NOT want to run into problems later on with, say, the income tax authorities or their kin.
What is normally done under such circumstances? Do we have to register our group with some authority in order to collect money? What do other LUG's do? I am sure there are precedents to this problem.
Please advise.
Thanks in advance, Sagar (for NashLUG)
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/little_league/
Actually, if you collect money, you need to keep accounts. If you are making profits from the event, you need to pay income tax. In addition there may be some other subsidiary or local laws that come into play, I cant think of any that apply.
So long the amounts are small, and the events low key (eg dont put in newsapper advts), I dont think Income Tax dept will bother (or even know) unless someone brings it to their notice through a complaint or tip-off. If that happens, then the person who has collected the money will need to prove that they have not made money from it.
If the organisation is a non-profit organisation, they are exempt from tax so long as the surplus money is not taken out of the organisation, used for any personal purpose of any member or officebearer of the organisation or used for the benefit of the members. However, in order to avail of the benefit, you need to be registered as a coop society, social organsation or non-profit company. EAch of these cost time and money and invovle a lot of paper-work. Besides, after the registration, you have to keep doing annyal paperwork like filing returns, ITax statement, getting accounts audited, etc. Also you need to have a proper constitution, by-laws and follow them deligently (eg holding AGM, electing managing committee, etc.)
For a small setup all these dont make sense. One way out is, go ahead and collect the money and spend it immediately on expenses of the seminar or event (but keep detailed notes for future use). If the amount is small, no one is going to bother you.
Another way is if one of the colleges or some other organisation takes the event under their wings. (I am not sure how it will work, but it is possible). Eg. College X may allow LUG to hold the event in their hall or class room, collect the money and spend it on what ever is required. Ofcourse, LUG will need to ensure that the college does not go in loss on the event. Or perhaps one of the colleges can actually sponser the LUG.....ie, they can form the LUG as a part of their college facilities like they have student society, book club, etc.
BTW, the cost of registering the LUG as a society is Rs. 10K to Rs. 15K as one time cost, at least Rs. 5K each year in paper work.
Regards Saswata
Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- ________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 05:23:19 -0800 (PST) From: Sagar Behere sagar_behere@yahoo.com Subject: money matters
Hi all,
I am talking on behalf of NashLUG, the Nashik Linux Users Group
We are a fledgling linux users group and to spread the Linux word around, we often go to nearby colleges and hold seminars on various aspects of GNU and linux.
In doing these seminars, we incur some costs and so far the group members have been bearing this personally.
We have this idea of charging the seminar members some nominal entry fee, somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 rupees. In these seminars, we'd also be distributing copies of knoppix or similar stuff.
Which brings us to the point in question. During one of our discussions, a question came up as to whether we, a bunch of enthusiasts, were authorised to collect money. We do NOT want to run into problems later on with, say, the income tax authorities or their kin.
What is normally done under such circumstances? Do we have to register our group with some authority in order to collect money? What do other LUG's do? I am sure there are precedents to this problem.
Please advise.
Thanks in advance, Sagar (for NashLUG)
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/little_league/
Morning Sagar,
Thanks for writing in.
Am outlining a series of issues we can start working on towards organising efforts collectively in and around Nashik.
Having the Bombay - GLUG conduct a days workshop on various Advocacy
issues pertaining to spreading FSF/OS in the country for the gluggers there.
We would like to Conduct a joint workshop with you in Nashik for all
the Engineering colleges and Commercial Institutions. This will help build interraction between us and foster growth at locally in the FSF/OS community at a mucher higher rate.
Get you Server Space/ hosting as and when necessary.
Help us learn from you and vice-versa.
Let us know in addition to the same if there are additional issues that we can help you deal with Sagar.
Trevor
hi
i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month . is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed
max
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On Thursday 01 April 2004 20:15, m kannan wrote:
hi
i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month
where did u read that.
is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed
Depends on the network load, since bandwidth is shared. The max thru put i got was 14kbps. However the average thruput plods along at 4kbps. This was when airtel had just launced the service in mumbai. It may have deteriorated (or improved) since then.
max
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jtd jtdsouza@softhome.net wrote: On Thursday 01 April 2004 20:15, m kannan wrote:
hi
i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month
>>where did u read that.
http://www.rediff.com/netguide/2003/aug/28mobile.htm
which phones support gprs under linux ?
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dear friends please suggest a mobile phone (under 6000) which works under linux for GPRS net connection . am using knoppix (hdinstall)
thanks
madhu kannan
Win an evening with the Indian cricket captain: Yahoo! India Promos.
I have friends who have been using gprs services both of Orange and Airtel for some time. As a primary connection, it is neither good nor bad. I get speeds between 30-40kbps. On downloads, I get throughput of 32.5 to 3.9 KB per sec., depending on location timing and other factors.
Actually airtel has been offering this faclity for almost a year. Orange offers the same facility for Rs. 499 per month.
The problem you are more likely to face is getting drivers for the gprs modems built into the mobiles. There are drivers for windows, but not on linux
Regards Saswata
m kannan wrote:
hi
i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month . is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed
max
Win an evening with the Indian cricket captain: Yahoo! India Promos.
I have seem speeds of only 1KB ( 10 kbps ) on the airtel network (mumbai as well as Pune) and hence have discontinued my use of this service. If you are planning to use it only for wmail and low amounts of browsing, this is good. But nothing more than that.
- Navneet
m kannan said the following on 01/04/2004 8:15 PM:
hi
i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month . is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed
max
Win an evening with the Indian cricket captain: Yahoo! India Promos.
Navneet Karnani wrote:
I have seem speeds of only 1KB ( 10 kbps ) on the airtel network (mumbai as well as Pune) and hence have discontinued my use of this service. If you are planning to use it only for wmail and low amounts of browsing, this is good. But nothing more than that.
- Navneet
Which phone do you have ? If it is a Nokia, then I am not suprised with the speed. Somehow Nokia on GPRS technology is really bad.
In additoon, it makes a difference as to which type of GPRS phone you have. Many of the older phones are Type 4, which means there is 1 channel for upload and one for download (each channel is 9.6kbps). Try with a type 10 gprs phone and you get much higher spped since you have 2 channels for upload and 4 channels for download. Seimens is reported to be the best, with sony erricson coming a close second.
Unfortunatley, most of the retailers here have not even heard of "types" in GPRS. you need to go to sites like www.gsmbox.com to find out which phone is good.
Regards Saswata
m kannan said the following on 01/04/2004 8:15 PM:
hi i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month . is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed max
Win an evening with the Indian cricket captain: Yahoo! India Promos.
I am using a Nokia 6610. Do you think that is a problem ? It's supposed to be an advanced phone.
- Navneet
Saswata said the following on 03/04/2004 4:29 PM:
Navneet Karnani wrote:
I have seem speeds of only 1KB ( 10 kbps ) on the airtel network (mumbai as well as Pune) and hence have discontinued my use of this service. If you are planning to use it only for wmail and low amounts of browsing, this is good. But nothing more than that.
- Navneet
Which phone do you have ? If it is a Nokia, then I am not suprised with the speed. Somehow Nokia on GPRS technology is really bad.
In additoon, it makes a difference as to which type of GPRS phone you have. Many of the older phones are Type 4, which means there is 1 channel for upload and one for download (each channel is 9.6kbps). Try with a type 10 gprs phone and you get much higher spped since you have 2 channels for upload and 4 channels for download. Seimens is reported to be the best, with sony erricson coming a close second.
Unfortunatley, most of the retailers here have not even heard of "types" in GPRS. you need to go to sites like www.gsmbox.com to find out which phone is good.
Regards Saswata
m kannan said the following on 01/04/2004 8:15 PM:
hi i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month . is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed max
Win an evening with the Indian cricket captain: Yahoo! India Promos.
Hi
Nokia 6610 is a type 3 gprs, where you have 3+1 channels. (check out www.gsmbox.com) you should get downloads of upto 28k only. In GPRS, nokia is considered bad, but the problem may actually be more with airtel network rather than the phone.
Next time you are in Mumbai, may be we can swap the card to my mobile and check the speed.
Regards Sawata
Navneet Karnani wrote:
I am using a Nokia 6610. Do you think that is a problem ? It's supposed to be an advanced phone.
- Navneet
Saswata said the following on 03/04/2004 4:29 PM:
Navneet Karnani wrote:
I have seem speeds of only 1KB ( 10 kbps ) on the airtel network (mumbai as well as Pune) and hence have discontinued my use of this service. If you are planning to use it only for wmail and low amounts of browsing, this is good. But nothing more than that.
- Navneet
Which phone do you have ? If it is a Nokia, then I am not suprised with the speed. Somehow Nokia on GPRS technology is really bad.
In additoon, it makes a difference as to which type of GPRS phone you have. Many of the older phones are Type 4, which means there is 1 channel for upload and one for download (each channel is 9.6kbps). Try with a type 10 gprs phone and you get much higher spped since you have 2 channels for upload and 4 channels for download. Seimens is reported to be the best, with sony erricson coming a close second.
Unfortunatley, most of the retailers here have not even heard of "types" in GPRS. you need to go to sites like www.gsmbox.com to find out which phone is good.
Regards Saswata
m kannan said the following on 01/04/2004 8:15 PM:
hi i have read in article that airtel is offering full time net connection using GPRS for 600 a month . is there anybody here who is using it under linux and how is the speed max
Win an evening with the Indian cricket captain: Yahoo! India Promos.
-
Frederick Noronha (FN) -
jtd -
m kannan -
Navneet Karnani -
Saswata -
Trevor Warren