* Manoj Srivastava (srivasta@debian.org) wrote: > On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:48:38 -0500, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> said: > > This gloom-and-doom prediction is really getting old. No, it > > wouldn't become a precedent, no, it wouldn't lower our principles, > > Yes, it does, in my opinion. > > > no, it's not a step towards making Debian no longer free. It's a > > When you bring money into the picture, everything changes. > Indeed, it is the love of money that ... Money is *nothing new* to Debian. The fact that you think it is amazes me. Debian gets donations all the time from people and companies, sometimes quite sizable ones. The DPL doesn't go nuts and start trying to demand more production from us or any such thing though, even though, yes, that would probably increase the donations coming in. > > couple ads on our web page to bring in a (probably small) revenue > > stream. > > Why do we need to do that? Have you considered that donation > of services etc may dry up if people think Debian already has a > revenue stream? You think that other people won't think of Debian as > yet another red hat if we started a "steady revenue stream"? If we have a revenue stream sufficient to keep our operations going w/o needing donations of hosting and other services I don't know that I'd consider that a bad thing. Just because it's how we've been doing it doesn't make it the best possible way. Consider that Debian wouldn't be potentially subject to the whims of a for-profit company if it, say, started distributing something that said for-profit company didn't agree with. (Please note that this is *hypothetical*, and I'm *not* worried, or concerned that brainfood, et al, would ever do this, but what if they went out of business (let us hope it never happens)? Or decided they weren't able to help any longer? etc, etc). > Perceptions count. I don't feel people's perceptions of Debian would change so dramatically. > > There are a number of other open source and free software websites > > which do this, it's not anything new and it certainly doesn't make > > you look like a commercial website, if anything it makes you look > > like *less* commercial. > > In your opinion. In mine, it means you have sold out. You know, that's funny, I *work* for a non-profit organization. Stephen
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