Re: ideas....

[MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop>]

"John Watson" <jgw2001uk@googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2)One real issue with Debian is a lack of admin tools, (such as yast is for
> SuSE). Considering starting a project to develop a range of gui based admin
> tools for Debian.

I think debconf is slowly growing more GUI.  If one uses a gnome-apt
and selects the gnome debconf front end, does that start to give
graphical admin?  Is that the sort of direction the project should
head, do you think?

> 3) [...] If I donate a million pounds to the Debian cause,  what
> happens to this investment?

Money decisions have mostly been left to the projec

A 10-million dollar donation question was posed in the recent project
leader debates.  See around lines 645 and 753-869 of
http://people.debian.org/~mjr/irc/dpl-debate-2007/dpl-debate-botless.html
  Anthony Towns is uncertain whether we could handle it;
  Wouter Verhelst would refuse it;
  Aigars Mahinovs would give it to Ubuntu;
  Steve McIntyre would spend it on conferences;
  the others didn't really answer AFAICS.

There might be other things in the platforms on
http://www.uk.debian.org/vote/ and we should know who's elected in a
few days.

[...]
>    - The investment is placed into a Escrow type account.
>    - If the project is completed on the time the allocated  investment is
>    passed to the project leader.
>    - The would be the projects leaders responsibility to share the
>    contribution accordingly.
>    - The project is only completed so long its agreed upon by the
>    investor and the project leader.

I dislike that this leaves developers without payment while they're
doing the work, which is a bit vulnerable, not sustainable.  Some
portion should be paid at start and for each milestone.  I know this
gambles some of the money, but it does give better feedback and
management than this all-or-nothing payment plan.  It's quite normal,
that if I'm working for someone new, I insist on some guarantee if
it's more work than I'm willing to gamble.  I think most of the
debian-related projects which people would fund are going to be more
work than a developer would usually gamble.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Webmaster/web developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop maker,
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