Re: Debian goes big business? [was: Re: Suggestion for RedHat (was: RH vs Deb...
Henning Makholm writes:
> If that's the only problem, then why not simply
>
> 1. keep the Debian development structure as it is.
>
> 2. someone who cares about it forms a company that produces CDs from
> the official CD immages and markets them, shrink-wrapped and with
> lots of pomp, circumstance and generally commercial gestures.
>
> 3. if the company makes a profit, then congratulations to those who
> put money into it at the beginning. They might want to contribute
> some of it to the Debian project (c/o SPI).
>
> 4. if the company finds it will be good for marketing to have this
> or that gadget which is not currently packaged, they'd hire a
> programmer to package (and possibly develop) it - that programmer
> would register as a Debian developer and have his usual say in
> Debian matters.
>
> Nothing of this needs any formal decision on behalf of the Debian
> project itself. The free software nature of Debian has always
> encouraged this sort of things. All it takes is for some people to
> get together and raise enough initial capital for producing the
> first round of CDs and lanuch the initial marketing boost.
I like this idea a lot. It would be similar to what Cygnus is doing
with the GNU development tools, this didn't affect the way the FSF
operates either. Such a company could also offer support for debian.
I think support is wat will get debian into companies, and make it more
mainstream. If you feel that is important/interesting to you, there
really is nothing in the DFSG that would stop you from doing it.
Eric Meijer
--
E.L. Meijer (tgakem@chem.tue.nl) | tel. office +31 40 2472189
Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032
Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (TAK) | tel. fax +31 40 2455054
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