> > My point is that this company would one day tries ot improve it's > > revenues and influence the Debian distribution to fits its needs. Look > > at the recent discussions about whether to ship Slink as i386 only, or > > to wait until m68k and others are ready. If Debian had been > > commercially distributed by a company, the choice wouldn't be taken on > > a 'How can this help the Debian dists and end-users' basis, but on a > > 'How can we get the most bucks' basis. > >
> You're thinking in traditional terms. Someone decides these issues now, > right? Those exact same people would be in charge of this corporation. > They would not be interested in the bottom line, but in what's best for > Debian. The word "corporation" scares a lot of people because of what it's > come to represent. But how a corporation is run is decided internally. > Just because there aren't any democratic corporations doesn't mean we > can't start one. I starting to think this whole mess started on a word understanding problem. I wouldn't name such an organization a 'corporation', =P > This new democratic Debian corporation could sell shrink-wrapped Debian > CDs right next to Red Hat CDs, hopefully cheaper. Combined with Debian's > advantages over Red Hat and word-of-mouth, Debian could possibly eclipse > Red Hat. Even if it doesn't become the best-selling distro, it could still > sell enough to give the developer's jobs. I'm not sure if this would be > considered a for-profit corporation or not. No one's really raking in any > profit, most of the money is going back into Debian and paying for the > packaging and such, but some people are getting paid, so I'm not sure. > I can see only two changes in Debian due to this corporation. Development > would (presumably) go faster because the developers are getting paid, and > Debian would become more well-known. > I also liked the idea that someone suggested earlier, that people could > pay dues into this corporation and get a vote. A democratic corporation > indeed. > This may sound radical, but we'll never know if it will work unless we > try, will we? Nope. But it does indeed sounds real good. How can we do so? > /----------------------------------------------------------\ > | pretzelgod | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > | (Eric Gillespie, Jr.) | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > |---------------------------<*>----------------------------| > | "That's the problem with going from a soldier to a | > | politician: you actually have to sit down and listen to | > | people who six months ago you would've just shot." | > | --President John Sheridan, Babylon 5 | > \----------------------------------------------------------/ > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null