Re: [gentoo-nfp] Gentoo NPO Business Model thoughts

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 11:37 -0500, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> While it might be a great concept. What about the SFC is there really to
> trust? IMHO We need much more info than what they provide on their
> website. Many questions still unanswered. Even with answers, their
> impact on projects over years is still unknown.

What questions?  You do realize that we've been in contact with these
people for *months* now, right?  We've asked them an awful lot of
questions in that time.

What the SFC provides is simple.  They provide knowledgeable and
informed staff that are interested in actually running the legal side of
open source projects.  This is something that Gentoo can not
sufficiently provide on its own.

> Yeah I really need to do historic research of past conversations and etc
> on this topic/subject. I take it any gatekeepers would be elected and
> etc kinda like the foundation is now.

We were figuring we'd just let the Council do it.  There's no point in
having a separate team for this, since all they'd be doing is
essentially throwing a "yay" or "nay" to proposals.

> hardware for them is another. Not sure if infra runs off 100% donated
> gear or if any of it has been purchased. Things like our hardware wish
> list we could provide instead of waiting for someone to contribute.

Maybe you should look into how things actually work currently before
assuming anything and basing your ideas off your flawed assumptions.
We've never once had to wait for contributions to buy anything.  We have
some money in the bank.  It isn't much.  In fact, it isn't even enough
to reimburse Daniel Robbins for the trademarks once we finalize that
transfer.

To put it simply, we've got almost no money, even after 5 years of
accumulating donations and store sales.  Our store sales are so
absolutely abysmal that I didn't even send in the 2007.0 media.  It
*literally* cost Gentoo money to sell 2006.1, we sold so few copies.  I
spent more money shipping the CDs to CafePress than we made in 6+ months
of sales.

Your ideas, while perfectly fine, are on a scale that is completely
unrealistic.  You need to realize that the scale we're working on is
smaller than a mom and pop shop.  We're well below the "poverty" line
and I don't see us ever coming out of it without somebody like IBM
deciding to dumb a few million dollars our way.  If that's what you're
shooting for, you better get out your slut gear and start your corporate
whoring now.  You're going to need it.  ;p

>
> Many more ways, all with the idea of furthering things along.
>
-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation