> Yep. But, IMHO, it has something to do with the feeling that if you > work for Debian, you're working for the community, including yourself. > If you work for Red Hat, you're giving money to someone who doesn't > care about YOU, only it's bank account. Actually, that's the feeling I > get.
I agree with your point mostly. I would much rather contribute to a non-profit community that I belong to than to a for-profit company that I am not a shareholder of. My only quibble with your point is that I get the impression the RedHat guys do actually care about more than just profit. Now you could be cynical and suggest that they are only pretending, and only contribute to the open software community in order to keep in the good books with linux users and hence help their bottom line. But is it not possible that they genuinely do appreciate what linux has done for them and want to give back to that community? I don't blame the RedHat people for wanting to start up a company. People have to eat, and if you want to earn an income from working on Linux, then starting a linux based company is probably the way to do it. I have a suggestion for RedHat however. Now that they are well established, why don't they turn their company into a non-profit organisation in which there are paid positions? That is, RedHat would continue to charge similar prices for CDs and support etc, and this money in turn would be used to pay the salaries of employees, but the organisation as a whole would not seek to make profit. All RedHat users could apply to become members of RedHat (and perhaps pay membership fees) in exchange for voting privileges and discounts etc. This model would be a bit different from the Debian one, but a good model nevertheless. And I think it would encourage more contributions from non-paid RedHat developers. It would mean there would be two major not-for-profit linux distributions which can only be good for the linux community, including Debian. Such a move would be a big sacrifice (in monetary terms) on the part of the current owners of RedHat --- they would be giving up ownership of a valuable company --- but it would be a wonderful way to give back to the linux community. And such an act of generosity would greatly magnify the value of the gift in much the same way that releasing software under GPL magnifies the value of the software. It would be a gift of similar magnitude to the one Linus gave. Although the giving of such a gift would mean the RedHat developers potentially may be missing out on many millions, I would be very surprised if they weren't still financially well off in much the same way Linus has been looked after. Another option would be to partially reimburse the RedHat developers by charging a significant membership fee (say $50-$100) and directing all of this money, during the transitional period, to the former owners. Surely RedHat users would gladly pay this sort of money if they realized that through it they were gaining community ownership of their own distribution? And it would ensure the RedHat developers wouldn't be financially wanting. Mark. _/~~~~~~~~\___/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________ ____/~~\_____/~~\__/~~\__________________________Mark_Phillips____________ ____/~~\_____/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ____/~~\HE___/~~\__/~~\APTAIN_____________________________________________ ____/~~\______/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"