Re: [gentoo-dev] Ethical Policy

[mbutcher]

There are a few presuppositions floating here that should probably be 
addressed  in order to overcome what appears to be a misunderstanding of a 
few terms.

".org" - being a dot-org does not mean that a company is a "Charity," it 
means that a company is a not-for-profit company or entity. That may include 
charities, but it also includes any other company that does not charge for 
services or products.

freeness - Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, etc. are not "unfree" because they charge 
for the CD distributions of their products. All three of them (and many many 
other commercial Linux copies) still provide source code, and still provide 
downloads free of charge, thus meeting both the "free speech" and "free beer" 
definitions of free. 

Even _if_ Gentoo sold commercial CDs of Gentoo Linux, they could still make 
the claim that they were completely free, because it would still be possible 
to get copies of the source code for every single part of Gentoo, since it is 
all under GPL. 

GPL - Please don't take this as an affront, but it would probably help you 
understand the issues if you read through the license (GPL) and some of the 
auxilary materials at gnu.org. That might help you understand why many of us 
think that the Debian Social Contract is in some ways restating the obvious. 
Note that Gnu.org is also a not-for-profit, has been around for many years, 
and is not "another Microsoft."
http://www.gnu.org

Matt Butcher

On Monday 04 February 2002 12:42 pm, you wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Thanks, for writing but again you're avoiding the question, for example a
> quote from your website:
>
> "Gentoo Linux is a versatile and fast, completely free x86-based Linux
> distribution"
>
> will it stay completely free, if so and considering you are not a charity
> how do you plan to make money?  I assume you do plan to make money out of
> the distro?
>
> "For the most part, these expenses have been coming out of my and our
> volunteer network admin's pockets"  - This sounds like you are generous,
> good spirited, etc.  But actually this is true for any startup company,
> would I have volenteered or donated money to the startup company called
> microsoft, I don't think so.  So again if you want to be treated
> differently to any other startup company, I think you need to explain how
> you are different to the other startup companies.
>
> Does Gentoo Technologies own any domains other than gentoo.org?
>
> And a final point to Chuck Haines, I'm not critising the quality of the
> distro, quite the opposite, the portage system is one of the cleaverest,
> best designed, therotically superior pieces of software I've seen.  I quite
> sure the rest of the distro is of equal quaility.
>
> Regards,
> David Herbert
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Robbins" <drobbins@g.o>
> To: <gentoo-dev@g.o>
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 7:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Ethical Policy
>
> > On Sun, 2002-02-03 at 06:59, David Herbert wrote:
> > > Call me paranoid but before putting effort into gentoo I would like to
>
> know more about who gentoo is.
>
> > > You're a .org but are you actually a charity?
> >
> > No, we're not a charity but we accept donations to help offset
> > development/hosting/hardware costs. For the most part, these expenses
> > have been coming out of my and our volunteer network admin's pockets.
> > The "donate" button is there so that those who enjoy Gentoo Linux can
> > freely offer their support for our project.
> >
> > > What is your relationship to gentoo.com?
> >
> > Our domain names both have "gentoo" in them.
> >
> > > What is your relationship with IBM?
> >
> > None, other than I do contract work for them (indirectly) to pay my
> > bills.
> >
> > > I suppose I'm looking for a statement akin to debian's social contract,
>
> because at present any ethics (which to me is the whole point of linux) are
> only implied.
>
> > I don't think that a Gentoo Linux social contract would necessarily be a
> > bad thing.  However, from past experience I've found that these kinds of
> > written "ethical guidelines" are often not followed or respected.  I
> > also don't see anything in the Debian Social Contract that is anything
> > special.  "We won't hide problems"?  Isn't this stuff kind of obvious
> > for a free software project?  But there are some good things in there.
> > I don't really see this as a "social contract" (since it's not as if
> > it's enforceable), but more like design/policy guidelines.
> >
> > > Also it would be nice to have a global option (in /etc/make.conf ?) for
>
> allowing only GPL'ed software, GPL + other "open source" licences, or any
> licence - so the end user can decide.
>
> > Yes, we plan to add that feature at some point.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > --
> > Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@g.o>
> > Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org
> > Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gentoo-dev mailing list
> > gentoo-dev@g.o
> > http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>
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