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On Sun, Aug 10, 2003 at 10:34:23AM -0400, Eric Jahn wrote: |
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> Hello Daniel, |
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> |
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> I wish to know what has been done towards Gentoo achieving non-profit |
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> status. I think it is crucial for the gentoo system to become |
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> non-profit, considering the volunteer support it receives. This |
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> question is directed at Gentoo management. |
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OK. Right now we are in the research stage. At LinuxWorld, I had some good |
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conversations with Ian Murdock of Progeny (and, of course, previously of |
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Deb"ian") and Ean Schuessler, President of SPI (the not-for-profit of which |
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Debian is a project,) as well as others. The conversations were extremely |
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helpful and productive. I don't view the transition to a not-for-profit |
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entity to be a trivial process. We don't want to repeat mistakes that have |
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been made in the past, and want to preserve the integrity of the Gentoo |
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project. The mission for the not-for-profit is being formulated as we |
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speak. There are two parts to the not-for-profit -- vision and |
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implementation -- and we are being very careful with each part. |
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Implementation will happen when we're ready, but we've learned from |
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experience that rushing doesn't always produce the best results. |
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|
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> Most non-profits start their work and declare themselves as non-profits |
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> before getting an IRS Employer Identification Number/Tax ID as a |
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> non-profit. Why hasn't Gentoo done the same? |
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|
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Because Gentoo Technologies, Inc. was initially created to handle my article |
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writing contracts for MacMillan and IBM developerWorks and not for Gentoo |
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Linux, and creating a 501(c)(3) at the inception of Gentoo Linux (when it |
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had a handful of users) would have been premature. And between the "tiny" |
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stage and the "huge" stage that we currently find ourselves in, we have been |
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focusing almost exclusively on the technical aspects of Gentoo and making |
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Gentoo the best possible distro for our users. Our 501(c)(3) efforts have |
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been held up for almost a year due to some people pushing for 501(c)(3) |
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status for less than noble objectives (read: commercial interests.) These |
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issues have recently been resolved so we are now making rapid progress |
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in the not-for-profit area. |
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The overwhelming majority of free software projects accept volunteer help |
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and do not have official not-for-profit entities set up to oversee them. |
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This only becomes an issue when the projects get "huge." Gentoo got "huge" |
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awfully fast, and we're still catching up. |
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In a private email, maybe you could introduce yourself, who you are, and |
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what your interest and current involvement in Gentoo is? I can't find any |
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record of you on our bug tracker or mailing lists, except for an almost |
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verbatim copy of this email that you sent to our -dev mailing list, to which |
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I am cc'ing a copy of this email. |
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Best Regards, |
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|
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-- |
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Daniel Robbins |
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Chief Architect, Gentoo Linux |
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http://www.gentoo.org |
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