A-EON Technology Acquires Amiga.org

[Duce]

Mentioning "feeding the kitty" is sort of poor form with these changes, imho.

I couldn't care less who owns the site as long as they don't change it from the spirited, well rounded place it is.

I also do know how business works.  The site is now a tax write-off for the new owners considering they do have some cross over factor.

I've got no problem with donations if people want to make them, and it does show the owners that the community supports them.  But when corporate interests get involved and associated costs of assets can be written off, I'd be hard pressed to give to what I essentially feel is someone's beer fund.

I don't see A-EON or AmigaKit asking for donations to keep their websites running, because that's a tax write-off.  I don't see A.org being anything different for the new owners, is all - even if nothing is changed.

I don't wish to sound like an unappreciative jerk here, but once corporations get involved, things do change.

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It's a company asset, no different in how I can write my internet, hosting expenses off on the company I operate.  Perhaps your tax laws are far different than mine, though - and admittedly it all depends which form of business you operate.

I can write down such expenses at tax time and basically come out even on them.

[Duce]

Thanks for the comments, new owners.  Didn't mean to grill you on financials, heh.  That being said, when one can host a forums for $15 a month with no limits on anything (eg; Hostgator Business class, who provides DNS for A.org), some transparency is needed to keep people contributing, which I truly hope they do here at A.org.

That being said, it's always been about the Amiga here, but don't lose the coffee house style areas.  Perhaps have them not pop up on the "fresh posts" lists, but a lot of people do come here to just (pardon my french) "shoot the %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!" about other topics that aren't entirely Amiga related.

[Duce]

@psxphil

I'm sorry if my statements didn't make sense.  What I mean, at least over here (CA, as a LLC) - if I buy "xxx company" or "xxx website" and fold them into my companies interests, I can write down some operating expenses.  For example, I'm in the IT and telecomms business, if I buy out some IT news site, once it becomes my property it's MY asset.  I can run it in whatever form I choose, but once I've bought and paid for it it's my asset and I can write off certain expenses tied to the operations of it once the appropriate amount of time passes.  

Again, running a site like this (A.org), on the host it's currently on is $15-$20 a month unless someone signed an extremely stupid contract.  I know because I have sites on the same host and I pay $13 a month for unlimited everything.

The ads would have paid far more than what it took to operate the place under the old regime, not to mention the donations.  I'm not here to nitpick the new owners - in fact, I do think they will do a bang up job.  But anyone thinking that this site costs a grand a month to run is a lunatic.

As I said, your tax laws may vary.  Mine allow me to write off operating expenses on assets and materials.

Anyways, I digress - so last post from me on the subject.  Best of luck to the new owners.

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Hope the mods are more up to the task than they used to be.  I recall getting a vague, but fairly direct - threat of personal injury via PM towards myself by the C-USA camp when I had the audacity to question some of their practices.

Reported that and never heard back from a moderator.