Re: [gentoo-nfp] What could the Gentoo Foundation do with money?

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 20:56 -0700, Ned Ludd wrote:
>
>
> I'm glad you are not the treasurer.

FYI, allot of these ideas wrt to spending other peoples money given to
the foundation. I doubt would even be made by the board alone, much less
just the treasurer. These types of funding items would likely be voted
on before added to any budget.

I have little interest in acting on such things alone, which includes
just the board doing what they feel is best. I am all for democracy and
giving other people the chance to chime in like now ;)

> >      8. Increase schwag and freebie stuff to give away at events
>
> This does not actually make the distro any better.

True, but makes recipients happy :) It makes things fun. Like for
example, those little sticky throw things that OpenNMS gives out. No
point, just fun :) No one even pays attention to the logo. But they are
fun to throw at people, in the office etc.


> >     12. Provide hardware to devs working on certain areas, device
> >         drivers etc ( like buying a bunch of video cards for those
> >         supporting binary drivers, or odd/expensive hardware )
>
> This is a tricky area. Many rules of eligibly would have to be setup
> and may cause internal conflicts/jealousy among devs getting all
> the pretty/cool toys.

Agreed, and that hardware would be Gentoo owned. There would have to be
some agreement that they actually use it for development etc. Not just
hoard it to play games, etc.

> >     13. Buy licenses to commercial apps so we can package and make
> >         ebuilds available for them.
>
> I would be strongly opposed to #13

I am not a huge fan of that one. Just an idea. After all we might be
able to leverage future licenses for free. If many of their users start
running their product/application on Gentoo. So that might encourage
greater use of Gentoo for deploying commercial apps.

Granted it could expose those apps to a whole can of worms. I think that
might daunt some companies. Which if we were paying customers. They
might be more open to patches, improvements, etc. Double edged sword.

Again I am not looking to totally go crazy with other peoples money.
Which any foundation funds obviously are.

> >     14. Provide FREE release media
>
> We already do this.

No in physical form. We distribute it in electronic form. I am saying
what if we could have a budget to send out X amount of cds for free each
year. Person just pays shipping, and orders are limited to 1-5 or
something. That way people can't go crazy.

Branded media on cd's with covers etc. That look semi professional. Why
have such a killer distro, distributed on burned cds? Works to hand to
your buddy/colleague/relative/etc, but professionally? Would you take a
burned cd to your boss/employer/random stranger and say here, run
this. :)

> >     15. Marketing and promotional materials ( flyers to hand out at
> >         events, banners, booth displays, etc )
>
> Tree hater..

No arms, no reach around, so screw the trees. Who says we use paper?
Let's use plastic, which comes from oil. Much better idea. ;)

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
amd64/Java/Trustees
Gentoo Foundation