Fedora and the world

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As I understand things, Fedora as a project has no monetary control.
>> The money comes from Red Hat and is held in Red Hat accounts.
>
> Yes, I have to blackmail Max or Greg or Paul when I want to see a
> monies expended on some sort of initiative. Blackmail, sweet-talk or
> physically threaten, I'll use which every technique works best for
> each one of them.
>
>>
>> There was discussion at long time ago about creating a Fedora
>> Foundation, however that proved to be not worth the effort.
>
> I think there is a stronger statement to be made than "not worth the
> effort."  It's quite possibly impossible to do as a US non-profit when
> Red Hat's contributions to the project's actual resource consumption
> is tallied given the requirements for non-profit status.  And a
> separate for-profit status doesn't actually give us much more than
> what we have right now, except increased staffing needs to act as a
> separate business office.
>
> The real question is, and continues to be, can we carve out a place
> inside the current financial structure that we can solicit funds from
> other entities beside Red Hat meant directly to be spent of community
> initiatives.  It's a completely unanswered question, and we won't know
> the answer until someone steps forward saying they are willing to drop
> money into the hands of the Fedora project, to be dispersed by the
> Fedora Board or other entity delegated by the Board, to meet some sort
> of objective.  Non-profit status is just not going to happen, because
> Red Hat is too heavily invested in the day-to-day costs of Fedora
> operations to stand Fedora up as an independent entity.  If there are
> entities out there who would like to give up some funding, I'd very
> much like to have a conversation with them as to what conditions would
> make them comfortable doing so..that does not involve a non-profit
> status.
>

Not that I think such entities exist... but I don't see how they can
give funding without dealing with a non-profit organization or Red Hat
were to 'offer' specified services for money with respect to Fedora.
In that case some company could then 'pay' Red Hat for say gcc support
in Fedora or something.. but there has to be some entity that the
organizations would have to do 'business' with.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"