Re: [gentoo-dev] Ethical Policy

["David Herbert" <mail@dsherbert.freeserve.co.uk>]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks, for writing but again you're avoiding the question, for example a
quote from your website:

"Gentoo Linux is a versatile and fast, completely free x86-based Linux
distribution"

will it stay completely free, if so and considering you are not a charity
how do you plan to make money?  I assume you do plan to make money out of
the distro?

"For the most part, these expenses have been coming out of my and our
volunteer network admin's pockets"  - This sounds like you are generous,
good spirited, etc.  But actually this is true for any startup company,
would I have volenteered or donated money to the startup company called
microsoft, I don't think so.  So again if you want to be treated differently
to any other startup company, I think you need to explain how you are
different to the other startup companies.

Does Gentoo Technologies own any domains other than gentoo.org?

And a final point to Chuck Haines, I'm not critising the quality of the
distro, quite the opposite, the portage system is one of the cleaverest,
best designed, therotically superior pieces of software I've seen.  I quite
sure the rest of the distro is of equal quaility.

Regards,
David Herbert


----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Robbins" <drobbins@gentoo.org>
To: <gentoo-dev@gentoo.org>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 7:20 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Ethical Policy


> On Sun, 2002-02-03 at 06:59, David Herbert wrote:
> > Call me paranoid but before putting effort into gentoo I would like to
know more about who gentoo is.
>
> > You're a .org but are you actually a charity?
>
> No, we're not a charity but we accept donations to help offset
> development/hosting/hardware costs. For the most part, these expenses
> have been coming out of my and our volunteer network admin's pockets.
> The "donate" button is there so that those who enjoy Gentoo Linux can
> freely offer their support for our project.
>
> > What is your relationship to gentoo.com?
>
> Our domain names both have "gentoo" in them.
>
> > What is your relationship with IBM?
>
> None, other than I do contract work for them (indirectly) to pay my
> bills.
>
> > I suppose I'm looking for a statement akin to debian's social contract,
because at present any ethics (which to me is the whole point of linux) are
only implied.
>
> I don't think that a Gentoo Linux social contract would necessarily be a
> bad thing.  However, from past experience I've found that these kinds of
> written "ethical guidelines" are often not followed or respected.  I
> also don't see anything in the Debian Social Contract that is anything
> special.  "We won't hide problems"?  Isn't this stuff kind of obvious
> for a free software project?  But there are some good things in there.
> I don't really see this as a "social contract" (since it's not as if
> it's enforceable), but more like design/policy guidelines.
>
> > Also it would be nice to have a global option (in /etc/make.conf ?) for
allowing only GPL'ed software, GPL + other "open source" licences, or any
licence - so the end user can decide.
>
> Yes, we plan to add that feature at some point.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> --
> Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
> Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org
> Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
>
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