Re: [gentoo-nfp] Response to Grant Goodyear

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 21 January 2008, Matthew Summers wrote:
> I now own a small development company & we use Gentoo (Hardened-amd64)
> on our development & production servers.  What's more I happen to deal
> largely in the non-profit, foundation, and grant world.  It is with
> regard to this particular aspect of my expertise that I wish to inform
> the various governmental bodies of Gentoo that there is a vast ocean
> of possibilities, and funding, available to non-profits &
> foundations.  This to perhaps inspire new thinking about the role of
> Gentoo and the Gentoo community in the world at large.

not sure about your subject as this paragraph seems to get it ... Grant does 
not act alone and in a vacuum.  he implements the will of the Gentoo 
developer base using the best of his abilities.

> I am of the opinion that Gentoo should not contract the SFC to manage
> the Foundation for the following reasons.

you dont contract the SFC them to manage your things ...

> -With responsible governance there is no real need to be under the
> umbrella of another larger organization.

we've already more than proven that we dont really have the man power to do 
this nor do we want to.

> -The SFC may or may not have the funding, capacity, or longevity to handle
> as large an organization as Gentoo.

that is why we talk with them to find out.  there is also the possibility of 
SPI.  at any rate, it isnt a big deal.  if the SFC were to explode, the 
contracts written with them allow Gentoo to legally break at any time with no 
penalty and retain all its rights as if no agreement had been made in the 
first place.

> -The SFC will surely take some Gentoo generated funding away from
> Gentoo to cover administrative costs, etc, that, given responsible
> governence, could be used for the greater benefit of Gentoo and the
> Gentoo community.

no, it wont.  read the SFLC home page.

> There are significant amounts of money available to NPOs, like Gentoo,
> from Federal grant programs to the more mundane private charitable
> donations.  In general, these funding opportunities require program
> development and partnerships with other organizations and institutions
> such as community based non-profits and universities.  The real beauty
> of these opportunities is that it fosters a relationship between our
> Gentoo community and the larger public, be it on a smaller local level
> with other community-based non-profits or on a larger scale with multi
> university research partnerships, etc.  One of the many benefits of
> this type of interaction is that funding can be allocated for many
> different activities, for example, provisions for administrative
> costs, new equipment, training programs, salaries, incentives for
> developers, and a premium experience for users.  Therefore, with this
> kind of funding, Gentoo can help its own community members while also
> assisting others. Which, in my opinion, is one of the strongest
> characteristics of the Gentoo community, helping others. This is
> demonstrated on IRC, in the forums, and in the email lists every day.
> Why would we need to belong to a larger organization to do these
> things?

because most (all?) Gentoo developers dont generally care.  they dont want to 
handle tax laws, manage receipts, make sure we stay compliant, pursue legal 
violations of Gentoo stuff, etc...  that is the entire (and only) point of 
the SFLC anyways.  we hand off the legal paperwork to them, but we still do 
all the other pieces ourselves (community, PR, events, purchasing of 
hardware/resources, etc...).  that is the only thing that failed and what 
started all this hubbub ... we missed the *paperwork*.  all the other pieces 
are completely independent topics.

> Why do we need an organization, like the SFC, to "manage"
> Gentoo.  Perhaps we ought simply solicit them for /pro bono/ legal
> assistance in emergency situations.

we have tried the random pro bono legal route before and found it basically 
not reliable.  pro bono's are overloaded.  why do you think a random pro bono 
legal would be able to support Gentoo but the SFLC would not ?

> I am of the opinion that Gentoo should welcome the return of Daniel
> Robbins, but in a somewhat more limited sense than his recent offer.

fixing the legal paperwork does not preclude anything else.  Daniel may 
certainly lead up community/press stuff without ever touching any of the 
legal mojo.  there is no point in intertwining these things.

> Consider the use of university internship programs for projects like
> documentation (technical writing students) & The GMN (journalism
> students).  These programs are a requirement to graduate for many
> university students.  With that, many companies and other
> organizations offer resume-building experience in their field in the
> form of these unpaid interships.  I'm sure many of you have had the
> pleasure of an unpaid internship. The Gentoo Foundation can leverage
> its status as a well known GNU/Linux distribution and a legitimate
> global organization to attract the leading universities around the
> world.  What I mean to say is that people pay attention to Gentoo and
> there exists a certain level of expectation of quality from the larger
> tech world. To really floor the critics, solicit a few English
> departments at some highly respected university to collaborate with a
> team of developers and users to create and maintain documentation and
> write a regular news letter. I know a few good writers and if you give
> them the right information to start with then answer any questions
> they have along the way you get really nice work.  What writer
> wouldn't like to have their name on really well written, and heavily
> viewed pages? Talk about an attention grabber.
>
> Further, consider using internship programs to assist with the
> management and governance of the Gentoo Foundation itself. There are
> many university programs that focus on non-profit and foundation
> management. Create programs that give opportunities to these students
> to participate in the day to day business of  the Gentoo Foundation.
> They can act in supporting roles for the trustees and counsel members
> and other various committees. Hey, its worth university credit to the
> student and its free to Gentoo.
>
> Consider the implementation of a Gentoo Patron program, such that
> companies and other organizations have an opportunity to support the
> Foundation, be it financially or with volunteers. In return, offer
> some Patron Profile Page to give the donors some visibility. Further,
> as a small business owner I have to say, its sometimes very tough to
> locally procure for employment a good developer, administrator, or
> otherwise one that knows their way around Gentoo or GNU/Linux for that
> matter.  I imagine that other companies have similar issues. Thus some
> way for companies and organization to be exposed to the larger Gentoo
> community would be a significant return on any investment.
>
> Consider a partnership with a larger organization, like Google, to
> extend the users experience in novel ways. One example would be the
> use of some social networking tools to aid the Gentoo community in
> collaborations on code, documentation, etc.

again, great ideas, but does not require any thing on the legal side in order 
to be executed.  a Gentoo peep *goes and does it* and gets the legal peeps 
(SFC/whatever) to fund it.  that's it.  you do not need to be a trustee to do 
these things.
-mike