Just out of curiosity, has any FOSS project obtained 501(c)3 status through the "scientific advancement and research" and/or "furthering of the arts" clauses? IANAL but these look like obvious matches, even more so than the education clause. Projects like SciPy make a massive contribution to scientific research, whereas collaborative tools for writers and musicians, for example, might be seen as furthering the arts.
Yup, lots have. The Apache Software Foundation has a scientific exemption, and IPython is fiscally-sponsored by NumFocus (http://numfocus.org) which has a scientific exemption as well.
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Just out of curiosity, has any FOSS project obtained 501(c)3 status through the "scientific advancement and research" and/or "furthering of the arts" clauses? IANAL but these look like obvious matches, even more so than the education clause. Projects like SciPy make a massive contribution to scientific research, whereas collaborative tools for writers and musicians, for example, might be seen as furthering the arts.
Yup, lots have. The Apache Software Foundation has a scientific exemption, and IPython is fiscally-sponsored by NumFocus (http://numfocus.org) which has a scientific exemption as well.