On Nov 14, 2007, at 17:50, Garrett D'Amore wrote: > IF we want to exist as a community *independent* from Sun, then we > *must* have control over our own identity, and ultimately also things > like resources, etc. An entity (non-profit or otherwise) becomes > necessary. (I think there are other third party non-profits that can > act as an "umbrella placeholder" as well, if we don't want to start > our > own. I have no experience there.) > > IF we do NOT want to be truly independent of Sun (and that may not be > such a terrible thing... Sun is after all the largest contributor to > this project by several orders of magnitude) then we don't need to go > down that path, but we need to stop complaining when Sun uses the > OpenSolaris name however they see fit.
This is a false dichotomy. It is reasonable to expect Sun's fiduciaries and their spokespeople to treat us with respect, regardless of our incorporated status, and I will continue to call for it regardless. A non-profit is an increasingly high maintenance activity (hence Fedora's reversal of its Foundation status a while back). It has gating rules concerning diversity of membership that we may not be able to sustain, has financial and operational reporting rules that are burdensome for volunteer staff to handle, and has implications for fundraising and governance that go far beyond "independence from Sun". I would not support us heading in that direction yet. Maybe that's enough to convince some folk it's essential, of course :-) S.
