DISCLAIMER: These are notes, and can have technical impossibilites
(especially concerning '.deb'ianizing of StarOffice)
Ok, here's the sum up:
- Debian will lose its spirit if it goes itself for-profit.
- A for-profit corporation based on Debian itself will eventually try
to influence/own it. (Consequences: See previous comment)
Bottom line: Debian should remain developer controlled.
To preserve a kind of user support, we should create a DUA, which
would have to do some/all of the following:
- Provide single user free of charge support through internet.
(email/newsgroups/knowledge base/whatever)
- Provide corporate support, at a cost (cause they think it's better
to pay it anyway), with the usual things sucha thing includes
(on-site, 24 hours a day, programmation capable team to adapt a
product)
- Work head-to-head against RedHat/Caldera/SuSE for publicity on
Debian and promoting .deb packaging of things like
StarOffice/WordPerfect
- Certification of technicians proficient in installing
Debian/scripting and maintaining of a Debian system.
- Be rentable, so it can re-invest back in publicity.
- Cannot influence Debian developers more than the Debian users it
deserves would influence it. (Meaning, you don't pay programmers, but
you can kindly ask them for a bugfixe/feature ;P )
Bottom line: Co-operative society/stores based on users, democratic
voting, no shareholding, all votes equals.
On a side note, if a user-based co-operative society forms, would a
developer-based society of the same kind be appreciated? It could for
an example provide acquisition of patents (basically, to GPLized them)
and work to allow developers for better recognition, allow to access
better resources (like an equivalent to a membership to W3C, or other
reserved to corporation bodies thingies.) and tries to augment
developer communication and tries to 'enforce' major headings of the
dist. (Like, say, we're switching to libc7)
Christian Lavoie
