Re: Withdrawl of fee for producing Debian CDs

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:

> One of the problems of leading a group of volunteers is that one can only
> lead where they will follow. There was too much resentment among a number
> of Debian developers over the $2 fee I proposed to charge for the privilege
> of producing the official Debian CD. Thus, Debian will not charge any fee
> for the privilege of producing the Official Debian CD. We will instead
> request, but not compel, a donation from CD manufacturers. The amount of the
> donation pledged per unit will be printed on the CD package. We will still
> require a contract to use the cover art and the words "Official Debian CD",
> but this contact will be designed to give the project control over the
> content, not revenue from unit sales. As currently, we will continue to
> allow anyone to produce Debian CDs without a contract, as long as they
> use different cover art and call it something without the words "Official
> Debian" in it.
> 
It's not clear that we have been listening to the same group. At least, I
never opposed the payment portion of your idea. I would have rather you
dropped the "official" designation and kept the payment/donation (which
you really have kept, but just reworded)

I like the idea of calling it a "Contribution CD" and thus declaring it's
purpose, rather than an "Official CD" implying that all others are somehow
Unofficial and therefore unsupported.

In any case, whether we call it contributions or payments, the bottom line
is, we need a place to send money for the project. The ability to do this
is a pre-depends on any other scheme for financing the project. Doesn't
the project have enough legal status to open a checking account? What do
we need to do to get to that point?

Thanks,

Dwarf

P.S. Just another point. If we had a place to deposit money, any future
montary problems could be solved by "small" donations from the developers.
I'd certainly send in $10 to help finance the project through any tough
times. If the rest of the group feels as I do this would yield $1600
dollars in one fell swoop. This wouldn't get very many people to trade
shows, but it would provide funds for advertising and other promotional
material.

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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