On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 01:46:20PM -0500, Stephen Frost wrote: > > Debian is sustainable precisely because it operates without money. If > > we fall into the trap of just throwing money at problems then it will > > rapidly become the only way to solve any problem (how can we ask for > > hardware donations when we're willing to buy hardware?), and that > > isn't sustainable. > > Your hypothesis is, uhm, interesting. Ignoring the commercial aspect, > since you don't mention that as part of the concern here, you feel that > if Debian uses money from cash donations to buy hardware it needs that > companies won't donate hardware? I find it hard to believe that > companies who donate hardware to us only do it because they, > essentially, feel sorry for the poor street urchin. Currently: "We would like this to happen and can make it happen by donating hardware" Your proposed scenario: "We would like this to happen, and if we don't donate any hardware then it will happen anyway because they'll just buy the kit" The only thing we gain in your scenario is the need to acquire significant amounts of money on a regular basis. > > > Little hard to get much done when you don't have the involvment of the > > > largest (far and away) project- we've seen that before. > > > > That's SPI's organisational problem. We should not let it become our > > problem. > > > > Debian is not a part of SPI, and is not controlled by SPI. SPI seems > > to have difficulty in realising this. They hold our assets, nothing > > more. We need it to remain this way. SPI will just have to get used to > > it. > > This is (almost) amusing. I suppose Debian doesn't actually exist, > that's unfortuante, but perhaps that makes your hypothesis that it can't > exist if it has money almost make sense. What are you talking about? Debian is a loose affiliation of independent developers, whose assets are held in trust by various corporations, but which is not controlled by any of them. This is fundamental to how the project works. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature