Re: Skolelinux and the "Debian Labs" idea
* Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> [2003-10-09 17:15]:
> I suspect that HP shareholders think that they're using HP research labs
> to make a profit.
Sure, but they don't make a profit *directly*. They're not selling
any stuff, they just do R&D. Other parts of HP sell what they've
developed.
> Certainly it'd be reasonable to restrict "Debian Labs" to groups
> that are doing R&D rather than sales. Do you want to limit
> consulting work too though?
Well, if we don't, then any Debian consulting business can call
themselves "Debian Labs" which is not what I'd like to see (if they do
100% consulting and don't put any work into Debian). Perhaps
consulting should be possible, as long as R&D is the main focus?
> If I've got $50k to spend getting, say, Gnucash improved to better
> handle Australian accounting rules [0], does it make any real sense to
> exclude Debian Labs from any possiblity of working on it? If you do want
No, I think that's perfectly valid.
> > Labs), but they shouldn't use HP Debian Labs direcetly to sell any
> > services or products.
>
> Not even Debian stable CDs? Why not, exactly? What conflict of interest do
> you see here?
Well, okay. They can surely sell Debian CDs in order to fund more
R&D. (But they shouldn't call themselved "Debian Labs" in order to be
in a better position to sell CDs in order to make a profit.)
> (For reference, I joined Debian specifically because it doesn't
> discriminate against people trying to make money out of free
> software, even by building proprietary software on top of it --
> indeed, we go so far as to explicitly support such uses in a few
> ways)
Sure, I have no problem with this. But Debian (the project) doesn't
make money out of what we do, and you could argue the same should
apply to a Debian Labs (this is a big difference between Debian and
Red Hat/Fedor, btw).
> is their any salary limit? How about if they do it cheaper than any
> competing support organisations, but still make a profit?
Then they should clearly use the money (profit) to fund more R&D.
> I agree (presuming the .5:.5 ratio is determined by the contributor,
> and can be 0:1 or 1:0 etc).
Yes, it should be up to the contributor. Debian can just make a
suggestion; what they do is completely up to them.
> FWIW, I'm in favour of requiring Debian Labs to be R&D focussed and to
> employ full time researchers, to provide debs of everything they develop,
> to focus on getting their successful research into main, and letting
...
> Solitaire all year", eg. But we shouldn't force them to ever say "no"
> to money for working on things that actually improve Debian, imo.
Right, I agree.
(I know I didn't respond to all questions, but I don't actually have
answers for all of them. I think your comments are incredibly useful
for this discussions, though, and hope others will comment on them.)
--
Martin Michlmayr
leader@debian.org
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