Re: Debian goes big business? [was: Re: Suggestion for RedHat (
On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Harrison, Shawn wrote:
> It's possible to have a privately-held corporation, in which the board of
> trustees and perhaps a few others hold the stock. The company I work for
> is organized this way - it gives the advantages of a corporation without
> the possibility of hostile take-overs and other nastities* of public
> trading. I would think those who are "in charge" of the project (however
> loosely that term applies) could just as well be the shareholders and
> board of trustees. There would never be any necessity that they hand over
> control to anyone at any time.
>
This is what I'm talking about. To go public would be to remove control
from the hands of the Debian community. Definitely not desirable.
> Of course, when money gets involved, harmony and brotherhood are a bit
> more fleeting.
>
This is a common assumption about human nature, but it's doubtful that
we're incapable of working together without getting greedy. It's because
we're raised to put so much emphasis on money and power that this becomes
a problem. Unfortunately, this is the society in which we must work.
However, the people we're referring to have already demonstrated their
desire to work for the betterment of Debian, and not for the sake of
money. Even if someone gets ideas about greed, it's extremely unlikely
that everyone will be like this. One more reason to include the member
votes that someone else suggested. If the board gets greedy, we replace
them.
> But I think this idea of a single business corporation to represent the
> project, as with RedHat, is misguided. The beauty of the Debian project
> is that it is a volunteer organization. Let's keep it that way. I am all
> for a for-profit business forming as a value-added seller of Debian
Once again I say that this would not change the attitudes of developers
toward Debian, except that it would give them more time to work on it since
their jobs would be to develop Debian. We would merely be removing the
need for developers to have separate jobs. I'm not sure about the details
of Red Hat's internal operations, but I'm quite sure someone is making
profit off the distribution, and the developers are merely employees.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an equal split of the
corporation's profits among the developers.
<rest of Harrison's post snipped>
/----------------------------------------------------------\
| pretzelgod | epgilles@olemiss.edu |
| (Eric Gillespie, Jr.) | epg@pretzelnet.cx |
|---------------------------<*>----------------------------|
| "That's the problem with going from a soldier to a |
| politician: you actually have to sit down and listen to |
| people who six months ago you would've just shot." |
| --President John Sheridan, Babylon 5 |
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