Re: Debian Corporation.

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Cyberdyn wrote:

> 
> We know that Debian doesn't put out CDROM's itself.  They're equipment is all
> donated by a few organizations here and there.  And there aren't that many
> confrences for them to attend.  So where do there "donations" go?  They also
> mentioned the cost of registering and maintaining the domain.  I have a domain
> and haven't paid a dime to maintain it since I registered it and don't have to
> pay any more until I update it which is $50 a year.
> 
> So.  My question is, what happens to the rest of the money?  They took in about
> $10,000 over the last year.  Now, without argument, they are not M$.  I
> seriously doubt they are spending $10,000 per year to go to confrences.

Lets see, money was donated by SPI to the GNOME project for development
machines. Also, the largest donations have only recently arrived and Bruce
made an announcement just this weekend that to the effect of finding
worthy  causes to begin supporting now that they have enough money to do
so.  Some of it went to legal expenses in forming the coporation,
obtaining trademarks, attending linux functions abroad, and a continuing
effort to obtain tax-exempt status for Debian.  

I should also remind you that many of the vendors give you a choice when
you buy the Debian CD's.  You can buy the $3 set or the $8 set that are
the same except that the $8 set includes a $5 donation to SPI.

Bruce takes no salary from SPI. Nobody takes a salary.  The only money
they take are reimbursement of expenses related to attending functions as
representatives of the Debian Distribution. 

> I don't begrudge the man making a small salary from Debian.  I would myself.  I
> do have a problem when he tries to snatch active developers from this, or any
> other project.

I have seen nothing that says that Bruce, Ian or anyone else takes a
salary from SPI.

> It appears to me, as it has from the start of my involvment, that Bruce's
> intentions were to use SEUL as a potential source of fixes to Debian in the
> user-friendlyness department.  This means he can take what we come up with and
> make it a part of Debian without credit, if he should choose.  But Bruce would
> never do that, right?

That sounds like the crap Red Hat pulls.  Getting the free community to
work on a project as long as they have veto power over the final product
and is why they decided not to participate in COAS.

Stop making up things just to muddy the water.  Sounds like a lot of sour
grapes to me.

I intend at some point to produce my own commercial linux or to at least
provide commercial administrative support for an existing distribution.
Free is fine but most companies will not touch free software with two
10-foot poles tied end-to-end.

A distribution that does not have commercial applications and support 
will go exactly nowhere outside of the hobby market.

George Bonser 
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.

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