Re: Future Debian CD plans
[Resent because of mailer trouble]
winni@xpilot.org (Winfried Truemper) wrote on 20.01.97 in <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.95.970120213450.16301K-100000@www.shop.de>:
> On Sun, 19 Jan 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:
>
> > I AM NOT TRYING TO TURN THE PROJECT INTO A COMMERCIAL ORGANIZATION.
> > IT IS A NON-PROFIT. I WANT TO RAISE OUR PERCEPTION IN THE PUBLIC BY
> > MAKING OUR PRODUCT _LOOK_ COMMERCIAL.
>
> IMHO, our current popularity is founded on the fact that we are strictly
> non-commercial and technical excellent. To look like a commercial product
> but to "carry the torch of free software" seems to me like to lie about
> the own parentage.
Actually, we will probably look less like a commercial product than the
FSF stuff. Looked at their offerings lately? I think they even have
"luxury" packages. I understand why, but I still don't like this.
On the other hand, a CD cover saying "$2 of the price of this CD go to the
Debian project" doesn't look that much commercial to me.
> commercial. Do you think the initial intentions of RedHat and Slackware
> were to make big bucks by selling Linux?).
Slackware only got there very late in the game, but Red Hat, AFAIK, _did_
start out with this idea firmly in mind. So did Caldera, for example.
> sources. By billing US$ 2 you disorte the free competition among the
> vendors.
Utter nonsense.
> > I am sure that we can ad a petty cash budget to the project without
> > alienating people. Ian Murdock got paid $10,000 to work on Debian, nobody
> > got upset.
>
> He got earnings which were not based on the work of the other Debian
> developers, that's the crucial difference.
Somehoe, I think that the people that get upset about the $2 fee have
never, ever been in an organization where the work was done by volunteers,
but where money was still needed - say for hardware[1]. These arguments
are so completely divorced from any reality it is amazing.
[1] Like the ISP I'm currently both using and working for
(*.westfalen.de). In fact, I'm not only getting nothing for my work, I'm
*paying*. And sometimes people get money back - for phone usage, for post
stamps, for going to meetings in some far away city. I've never heard
anybody among us voice problems with this.
> > One thing I am very sure of. I am tired of being the administrative slave
> > of a bunch of whiny, fearful kids.
That's the same here, only the whiny kids are *not* the volunteers. I must
say I'm somewhat shocked it's different with Debian.
Then again, there are very many people in Debian.
> What else did you expect when you take the role as a leader of a project
> runned by volunteers? Or better: what alternatives do you see than being a
> slave to the volunteers?
Be treated like any other volunteer? That's what I'd expect, from what
I've seen elsewhere.
MfG Kai
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