Why is there no Fedora Project Store?

[Michael Dinon]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 9:10 AM, David Nalley <david at gnsa.us> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Michael Dinon <mdinon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > First off appologies in advance if question has been covered before and
> this
> > isn't the right list, has there ever been any thought to have a Fedora
> store
> > where proceeds from T-Shirt, laptop bag, stickers, and coffee mugs could
> > benefit the Fedora project?  Basically something like the store for the
> > GNOME project.  I am sure there must be a good reason why this doesn't
> > already exist for the Fedora project, but I haven't found it as of yet.
> Oh
> > and yes I know of the Red Hat mini Fedora store.
> >
> > --
> > Mike
> >
> > --
> > marketing mailing list
> > marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
> >
>
> So we've had numerous opportunities and even sub-projects attempting
> to do so but it boils down to a few issues.
>
> The biggest is, we have no way do handle inbound money. Fedora is
> legally a non-entity. So RHT is the de facto entity when Fedora comes
> up, and the landscape for dealing with sales and corporate taxes is so
> laden with landmines that every time we've discussed taking money it
> appears impossible even from outside of RHT, I can only imagine there
> are RHT-Finance and RHT-Legal types that automatically begin consuming
> antacid when it's brought up. :)
>
> The second is, for expansive web stores like Mozilla and Ubuntu have
> it requires a large commitment upfront, and management fees. This is
> effectively 25% of Fedora's annual disretionary budget. While it's
> likely that we'd recoup some if not all of that money, it's a big
> chunk of change, and one does have to question if the return on
> investment would be worthwhile.
>
> Fedora-fr maintains a spreadshirt site in France, but it's largely
> shirts and clothing. Fedora's regional ambassadors do produce large
> amounts of swag including, bathrobes, shirts, tattoos, buttons,
> stickers, case badges, etc. These are freely given out at events that
> fedora appears at.
>
> --David
>

Ok thank you for the response.  I wasn't envisioning a large store like
Mozilla but something more along the lines of GNOME's Zazzle store.  It is a
bit of a shame as I would love to buy Fedora gear that I knew was benefiting
the project rather than some person who randomly put up a Fedora shirt on
Cafepress.  Since RHT already has a small offering of Fedora gear has there
been any thought about enhancing that offering with new items/designs,
ideally taking input from the Fedora Project but handling the finance/legal
aspect of it?

-- 
Mike
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