Hi, my previous mail targeted the topic of using Debian's money (<20130312094330.ga30...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com>). But the topic of money in Debian does not have to be limited to that.
The Debian ecosystem includes many economical actors, be it companies or individuals, but we tend to hide those aspects as if they didn't exist. Despite Debian's non-profit status, IMHO Debian's growth and success relies on the capacity of those "actors" to have some "economical success". And there are many ways to help those actors, without involving any direct flow of money from Debian to them, in particular at the press/publicity level. When a project ultimately benefits to the Debian project, we should not fear to promote it even if that promotion helps the project initiator to make money (and IMO even more so when the project initiator is a Debian member). Do you agree with this analysis and statement? If not, why? If yes, how can we shift our culture and our policies towards this goal? ---- For full disclosure, I'm speaking of experience here since I tried to get some Debian press coverage of the fundraising for the liberation of the Debian Administrator's Handbook. See https://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2011/10/threads.html#00001 for the discussion that happened. I also use my blog (and thus Planet Debian) to build an audience and try to get donations to support my Debian work. In the end, I even got a mail of DAM saying that they got some complaints (I have never been told who complained and how many they were) that I was abusing Debian resources in ways not authorized by the Debian Machine Usage Policy (« Don't use Debian Facilities for private financial gain or for commercial purposes ») and that there was a risk that people loose trust in my work because of financial interests that I could have. I say this now, not to start a thread on my specific case, but to show that the level of agressivity towards "openly-for-profit" activities in a Debian context is not null even when those activities do benefit to Debian. And IMO we should try to fix this, eventually. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312110606.gb30...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
