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

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 09:03 +0100, Marius Mauch wrote:
>
> So basically you want to merge The Gentoo Foundation and teh Gentoo
> project into a "normal" software company like Redhat or Novell, just
> without profit oriented shareholders?

In a nutshell yes. Only motivating factor is the quality of the OS being
produced or etc. Community and quality interest, verses profit.

> Going by observations during Googles SOC program the distribution
> aspect is going to be an administrative nightmare if this goes beyond a
> certain scale. Not to mention the impact this would have on the social
> structure of the project, as adding even a little money is going to
> change a lot of things, and not necessarily in a good way.

Yes but I think many will agree things currently are not good. 
Not saying this is the best idea, but very likely would shake the tree.
Shedding any weak, or borderline dead leaves off in the process ;)

I do see the sale of concept socially to be one of the bigger hurdles.
But one I do feel can be overcome, and likely would have a good outcome.

> A pretty naive point of view IMHO. Even fi we wouldn't officially be
> profit oriented, as soon as you hire people and require revenue you
> become profit oriented in some way, both to secure existing jobs and to
> eventually create new ones. And comparison with the Red Cross is kinda
> contradicting your statement that we shouldn't rely on donations and
> instead sell services.

Mainly bringing up the RedCross due to it's mixture of paid and
volunteer staff. But likely the PGA Tour is a better company there to
compare to. NPO but less donations, and many events do get staffed by
volunteers. While many are paid full time to do the same.

But yes revenue would be required to sustain payroll and overhead. Thus
paid support services, which I feel would generate more than enough.
Plus people could still donate money, but would be more like an
investment verses donation.

Now I did play around with some crude numbers, and a concept like this
would require considerable funding to get moving. Seems like a several
million. Even when you take a pathetic pay rate and start multiply it
against ruff $'s you hit a few million pretty quickly.

> I really think you're by far underestimating the impact money could
> have on the project, and overestimating the potential profit/revenue.

Well I know there would be some "damage" in the process. I chalk that
off to things getting worse before getting better. But could get worse
and stay that way. Seems like many are kinda over it either way. So to
me it's a last ditch effort. Worse case everyone is let go, pay wise.
Then the entity turned into a different type of legal NPO and handed
over the SFC.

> Well, it's sports, sports implies media, and media leads to large
> scale advertising, which generates a lot of money, and that's what
> motivates sponsors.

Yeah, but that's not all of IBM's interest. Yes they are all over the
PGA Tour advertising. But they are also pushing the tech internally.
Then using the events to wine and dine clients, all the while pimping
IBM hardware. As they talk about how the PGA is running all their latest
stuff and etc. Pretty sure that leads to more revenue for IBM than
advertising or etc.

> I hope you're not really thinking in those dimensions.

Not for revenue generation or sponsor interest. Sponsors would have
their own interest, just like they do in any sort of consortium. Like
hypertransport or etc. Which would be one reason to sponsor. Not to
mention revenue from paid support services.

Sure sponsors might get some side advertising or etc on site, GWN etc
MAYBE. But that's very minor and quite moot in comparison to everything
else wrt to generation of revenue..

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java