Suggestion for RedHat (was: RH vs Debian)

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

> Yep. But, IMHO, it has something to do with the feeling that if you 
> work for Debian, you're working for the community, including yourself. 
> If you work for Red Hat, you're giving money to someone who doesn't 
> care about YOU, only it's bank account. Actually, that's the feeling I 
> get.

I agree with your point mostly.  I would much rather contribute to a
non-profit community that I belong to than to a for-profit company
that I am not a shareholder of.  My only quibble with your point is
that I get the impression the RedHat guys do actually care about more
than just profit.  Now you could be cynical and suggest that they are
only pretending, and only contribute to the open software community in
order to keep in the good books with linux users and hence help their
bottom line.  But is it not possible that they genuinely do appreciate
what linux has done for them and want to give back to that community?

I don't blame the RedHat people for wanting to start up a company.
People have to eat, and if you want to earn an income from working on
Linux, then starting a linux based company is probably the way to do
it.

I have a suggestion for RedHat however.  Now that they are well
established, why don't they turn their company into a non-profit
organisation in which there are paid positions?  That is, RedHat would
continue to charge similar prices for CDs and support etc, and this
money in turn would be used to pay the salaries of employees, but the
organisation as a whole would not seek to make profit.  All RedHat
users could apply to become members of RedHat (and perhaps pay
membership fees) in exchange for voting privileges and discounts etc.

This model would be a bit different from the Debian one, but a good
model nevertheless.  And I think it would encourage more contributions
from non-paid RedHat developers.  It would mean there would be two
major not-for-profit linux distributions which can only be good for
the linux community, including Debian.

Such a move would be a big sacrifice (in monetary terms) on the part
of the current owners of RedHat --- they would be giving up ownership
of a valuable company --- but it would be a wonderful way to give back
to the linux community.  And such an act of generosity would greatly
magnify the value of the gift in much the same way that releasing
software under GPL magnifies the value of the software.  It would be
a gift of similar magnitude to the one Linus gave.

Although the giving of such a gift would mean the RedHat developers
potentially may be missing out on many millions, I would be very
surprised if they weren't still financially well off in much the same
way Linus has been looked after.

Another option would be to partially reimburse the RedHat developers
by charging a significant membership fee (say $50-$100) and directing
all of this money, during the transitional period, to the former
owners.  Surely RedHat users would gladly pay this sort of money if
they realized that through it they were gaining community ownership of
their own distribution?  And it would ensure the RedHat developers
wouldn't be financially wanting.

Mark.


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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"