Re: Debian goes big business? [was: Re: Suggestion for RedHat (
shawn_harrison@tyndale.com (Harrison, Shawn) writes:
> 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.
>
Yes please. A business marketing Debian would be a separate thing.
We really shouldn't be bothered with these issues.
> I am all
> for a for-profit business forming as a value-added seller of Debian
> products. Such a business could focus on pre-installations, packaging and
> marketing, and user support. I would think a very successful business
> could be built on such a model, and there would be no necessary control
> flowing either way between said business and the Debian organization. The
> Debian community would control the software, such a business (and there
> could be many of them) would control its own marketing, packaging,
> support program, etc.
>
That's IMHO quite well rephrased what i had in mind when i voiced my
original idea. But my main point was that we don't need to discuss
ideas but that someone capable enough in this regard would start doing
his/her business as he/she pleases. This someone should do everything
necessary to make a huge income and be clever enough to reinvest it in
Debian. Only those who have can effectively give and only those who
do know how to earn not only peanuts can make the necessary income.
This needs a skillful business person and not free software developers
with restricted moral attitudes.
We need a company like SuSE which is providing a very well done shrink
wrapped distribution which can be easily installed even by newbies and
by Linux profis as well. They provide commercial support and heavily
do everything to market Linux in a very professional way. And then
they pay quite some free software developers to do their job full
time. SuSE is the biggest player here in Germany and obviously is
becoming quite a severe competition to Redhat simply because their
shrink wrapped product is better done. We need an entrepreneur who
does it even better than SuSE but with Debian. Please get hold of a
current SuSE-6.0 and see for yourself what it's all about. You'll be
astonished about how slick this distribution has become!
The true hacker nature might only sneer at the SuSE efforts but part
time sysadmins are quite happy about the easyness and time saving
features provided by SuSE. And it's even becoming better with every
single release...
Money is not bad and making money is not bad either. Even making big
bucks is not bad in no way. But it is very bad to not reinvest the
money and just stash it away for oneself, like a certain CEO of well
known american software corporation effectively does. Money can be
very helpful if used the right way. Only making oneself rich leads to
nowhere, because when you die you'll have to leave it behind anyway.
But talk is still cheap. Would the real future Debian entrepreneur
willed to make lots of money please stand up and just do it, please!?
Cheers, P. *8^)
--
--------- Paul Seelig <pseelig@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de> -----------
African Music Archive - Institute for Ethnology and Africa Studies
Johannes Gutenberg-University - Forum 6 - 55099 Mainz/Germany
------------------- http://ntama.uni-mainz.de --------------------
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