On Mar 18, 2006, at 8:09 AM, David H. wrote:
Fink has grown. It has grown quickly and all of the core team, including myself acknowledge, that voluntary work is limited to what each individual is able to give. There are many people out there using Fink and we would like to make things easier for them. Unfortunately that means that we, as a team, have to ensure that enough funding and legal backup is there to allow Fink such growth.
I'm not sure why this is necessary. Fink is growing, but that doesn't mean it requires a corporate foundation. There are only two reasons given on the wiki:
"Putting Fink under a legal umbrella thus partly indemnifying the core developers from most legal threats, as well as protecting them from costly claims for compensation."
Again, I don't see why this is necessary. Fink, as well as all submitted packages, are licensed under the GPL, which explicitly states there is no warranty. And although that doesn't prevent someone from suing Fink's developers, the chances of that happening are pretty slim, are they not? I've developed and distributed several products under the GPL, but I certainly don't lie awake at night wondering if someone's going to sue me.
"A legally protected way to accept monetary donations as well as donations in kind, ensuring the resources needed to improve and further all services provided to the community by Fink."
Nothing is said about why money is necessary and what it will be used for. New computers for a build farm? Salaries for the core developers? Even if there's a good reason, would donations even come? I suspect most in the Fink community would rather provide time than money. In particular, I'd rather we focus on structural and policy problems [1] that are never going to be solved by throwing money at them. And even then, let's say we all agree that Fink needs money and everyone has money to donate. Is a corporation really the best way of handling this? Don't SourceForge or PayPal provide a donation service without all the extra overhead (the expense of hiring a lawyer and all that)?
Trevor [1] Like this one:http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php? thread_id=8894381&forum_id=2056
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