Somewhere it was mentioned that all these meetings were being conducted by different sets of Cruise team members… could have just been that the person presenting at those meetings didn't have the same connectivity issues.
That depends... I don't know the situation in the EU, but based on personal experience in the US:
If you are expecting less than $25k in revenue (donations, grants, program service revenue, etc.) in each of your first three years, you can use the IRS's abbreviated process and get setup within a month (for the cost of setting up a corporation with your state government). If that exemption doesn't apply, it can take the IRS over a year to approve your application for tax exempt status. There are also significant compliance costs that can be burdensome for a small organization.
The TLF is a big dog for big dog projects, and I was just using them as an example of the structure. The Apache Foundation has their own flavor of governance, as does Numfocus (which sponsors a bunch of scientific computing projects). I'd expect that this move will probably trigger the creation of some "mobile app developer collective" organizations that specialize in this kind of thing, kind of like a "digital makerspace".
Yeah, it wouldn't be something that could be entered into without some consideration, but there are already a many, many software projects that are successfully distributed by non-profit organizations, so it certainly is feasible.
Apple considered the App Store commission to be compensation for the value delivered by the entire iOS developer ecosystem, not just the mechanical/infrastructure parts of the app distribution process. It was a pretty good setup: aside from the $100/year membership fee, the charges scaled with revenue, which in most cases is a good approximation for the value provided (there were some edge cases where that falls apart, like digital content purchases). Unlike, say Microsoft, they didn't charge $250/seat/year for their full-fat IDE. The also haven't charged licencing fees for the SDK, like is common in the video game space.
The new alternative business terms basically set that up. The "reasonable fee" is €0.50/install plus 10% of recurring revenue for customers acquired through via the Apple App Store.
Apple doesn't care about porn on iOS devices, they just don't want it in the App Store. Unless a PornHub app is full of malware, it shouldn't have any problem getting notarized.
The announcement indicates that notarization for iOS platforms will include human review. They are basically dividing the App Store review process in half, with the platform safety side (for all apps) and the content/quality side (only for App Store).
No, that's only for the alternative store app itself. Epic will have to pay the €0.50 fee on the first install of Epic Games Store but not on the first million installs of Fortnight.
and the one potential category of those apps, various flavors of open source software, can be distributed by a non-profit organization and be exempt from the fees.
All of the developer tools and SDKs have value and are used regardless of distribution channel. Those haven't been free, they've just been included in the App Store commission structure. Developers pay for those based on the value they generate (i.e. revenue). If you want out of the App Store as a distribution channel, Apple still expects to be compensated for the value it's developer tools and platform is providing to developers, and the €0.50 per install fee is how they are choosing to charge for those services.
Apple has put in place a pretty high barrier to entry for alternative marketplaces. It's not something a game developer is gonna be able to casually setup. Apple is requiring, among other things, having a bunch of processes in place for handling developer and customer support, as well as a €1 million standby letter of credit.
Yeah, the non-profit organization requirement is insurance for Apple that you aren't making money off your app some other way. Yeah, it's inconvenient for people who legitimately want to give stuff away for fun, but it isn't an insurmountable obstacle.
Here in the US at least we have the concept of "fiscal sponsorship" in the non-profit space. A registered non-profit organization acts as sponsor for smaller groups and projects. The activities still have to be compliant, but the small groups don't have to go through the expense of setting up a free-standing organization. The Linux Foundation does this for quite a few open source software projects, for example. This is likely a good model for open source apps in this situation.
What's even more galling is that they introduced a "Pro Tools" subscription with some extra features for for $10/month that they are trying to sell to their existing subscribers (the ones that pay hundreds per year for access to their databases).
It isn't entirely complete, but you can export trees from Ancestry as GED files, which is the closest one can get to an interoperable family tree file format.
That is correct. You invested $100k in developing a new product. Even if you fired your developer today, that product will earn you income for years to come. The general principle is that when you make investments (versus pay operating expenses), you can't deduct the cost of the investment up front, you have to deduct it over the "life" of the investment. In the case of developed software, it's "life" is deemed to be 5 or 15 years for tax purposes.
Previously they made an exception for some kinds of R&D (versus other kinds of investments), so that they could be deducted all in the first year, within certain parameters. The TCJA took away that special treatment (to pay for overall tax rate cuts).
Not announcing the platform in advance is a conscious choice by Amtrak. They do it intentionally because they do not want people waiting on the platforms, ostensibly in the interests of safety and efficient passenger flow in the limited space. It's not really an matter of incompetence, Amtrak absolutely could announce the platforms in advance if they wanted to do that.
It sounds like it's an issue with LastPass's payment provider, who must think they are doing them a favor by blocking transactions with email addresses at "suspicious domains".
It looks rather generic... rather than being customized to fit any specific country's regulatory system. From what I can tell, the author is not from the United States.