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Re: Using money to fund real Debian work



Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org> writes:

> In the introduction of our Constitution:

>   The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made
>   common cause to create a free operating system[*].

> I first did not notice the footnote

>   [*] ... and find a job in the IT industry.

> My paid job is neither related to Debian nor to my activities within
> Debian, so I must admit that I have been a fool to give time to
> Debian without return, and I will now look for some medical help to
> diagnose and cure this distortion of reality perception.

My paid job is related to Debian.  I would continue to work on Debian even
if my paid job weren't related to Debian.  Because my paid job is related,
I am able to get more done on Debian than I could otherwise since I can do
some things for Debian during normal working hours.  If I had some other
unrelated job, I would only be able to work on Debian in my own time.  The
things I particularly want to get done may get done at the same rate
either way, since my paid job may not care about them, but my paid job
gives me the opportunity to fix other things that improve Debian even if
they may not be my personal top priorities.

I really don't understand why this is a problem or why this should upset
anyone.  I understand that people are upset, but in the absence of logic
to that upsetness that I understand and given that I don't see any way any
large organization could avoid the issues that they're upset about
entirely, I don't really see a reasonable way of addressing their
concerns.  But I still don't see a significant difference between
dunc-tank paying people and HP, or Canonical, or Stanford paying people.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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