[gentoo-nfp] Response to Grant Goodyear

[Matthew Summers]

Greetings,

First, I wish to state that I am a long time Gentoo user and over the
past several years I have been nothing but happy with Gentoo.  It is
my opinion that Gentoo is the greatest of all GNU/Linux distributions,
and I want to extend my most hearty gratitude to the entire Gentoo
community, to the developers, to the users,to everyone involved, both
in the past and in the present, for all of the effort over the years.
It has been monumental. Many thanks.

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.


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

-With responsible governance there is no real need to be under the
umbrella of another larger organization.  -The SFC may or may not have
the funding, capacity, or longevity to handle as large an organization
as Gentoo.
-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.

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? 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.


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.

Mr. Robbins is obviously an extremely intelligent and dedicated
individual that seems to really care about the health of Gentoo. In
addition, Mr. Robbins has a large amount of experience in the larger
world of business and software development.  Thus it seems reasonable
to posit that he may indeed have some very good ideas regarding the
direction of Gentoo.  I, for one, welcome a transparent roadmap that I
would have the opportunity to review and comment on. Prior to starting
a business I was rather happy to simply remain on the fringe of the
Gentoo community.  My main interest was in using the meta-distro to
accomplish some very specific research related work as well as use on
my personal machines.  However, now that I rely on Gentoo from a
business perspective I find myself much more interested in and
concerned about the general direction of Gentoo.  Thus, a more
transparent governance would put my mind at ease and provide a means
for greater communication with Gentoo's developers.


What follows are some suggestions.

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.


In closing, I want to offer thanks for a job well done.  It has taken
the dedication of many individuals to get Gentoo to where it is today.
This spirit is not gone. Thus, we look toward a bright future. If
anyone wishes to contact me for any reason please do so, I would be
pleased to answer any questions. If I can provide any futher
information or assistance, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best Regards,
Matthew Summers

-- 
Matthew W. Summers

Chief Executive Officer & Systems Engineer
Liquidus Tech, LLC
309 N. Jefferson Ave. Suite 378
Springfield, MO 65806
[phone]
matthew.summers@××××××××××××.com
www.liquidustech.com 

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