DISCLAIMER: These are notes, and can have technical impossibilites (especially concerning '.deb'ianizing of StarOffice)
Ok, here's the sum up: - Debian will lose its spirit if it goes itself for-profit. - A for-profit corporation based on Debian itself will eventually try to influence/own it. (Consequences: See previous comment) Bottom line: Debian should remain developer controlled. To preserve a kind of user support, we should create a DUA, which would have to do some/all of the following: - Provide single user free of charge support through internet. (email/newsgroups/knowledge base/whatever) - Provide corporate support, at a cost (cause they think it's better to pay it anyway), with the usual things sucha thing includes (on-site, 24 hours a day, programmation capable team to adapt a product) - Work head-to-head against RedHat/Caldera/SuSE for publicity on Debian and promoting .deb packaging of things like StarOffice/WordPerfect - Certification of technicians proficient in installing Debian/scripting and maintaining of a Debian system. - Be rentable, so it can re-invest back in publicity. - Cannot influence Debian developers more than the Debian users it deserves would influence it. (Meaning, you don't pay programmers, but you can kindly ask them for a bugfixe/feature ;P ) Bottom line: Co-operative society/stores based on users, democratic voting, no shareholding, all votes equals. On a side note, if a user-based co-operative society forms, would a developer-based society of the same kind be appreciated? It could for an example provide acquisition of patents (basically, to GPLized them) and work to allow developers for better recognition, allow to access better resources (like an equivalent to a membership to W3C, or other reserved to corporation bodies thingies.) and tries to augment developer communication and tries to 'enforce' major headings of the dist. (Like, say, we're switching to libc7) Christian Lavoie