Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Iain Buchanan <iaindb@netspace.net.au>]

On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 19:47 +0000, James wrote:
> Jil Larner <jil <at> gnoo.eu> writes:
> 
> 
> > May I suggest you split the discussion if you continue about licensing,
> > so we can keep a clear topic on Daniel's come back ?
> 
> I only use licensing as an example (that I'm willing to defend
> as long as it takes) to support the notion of vehicles to
> generate revenue around the 'gentoo engine'.  After all, if
> you look at Daniel's recent past, he's been searching for ways
> to use Gentoo, to *make money*.  Several folks have pointed out
> that the majority of people believe that using (gentoo) linux to 
> make money is a good idea. Daniel has been with lots of ventures
> in the recent past. Gentoo is his next 'bidness'.

By friday (or saturday) we will know whether or not DRobbins has been
accepted, and shortly after you will know if it is his plan to
commercialise Gentoo (which I personally don't think he is about to do).
If he does (there are a lot of if's leading up to this) then surely you
can apply to work on the project.  And just like Fedora, there will be a
"free" split.

If this doesn't happen, you can of course start your own commercial
Gentoo project.  Write an installer that can handle multiple PC's
easily, polish some business aspects (printer admin, domain control,
security), and write some scripts to share the compile amongst multiple
business machines and install from packages, and away you go.

I don't see a problem with the RedHat / Fedora model, but it doesn't
suit Gentoo in it's current form.  Firstly, Fedora is the spin off, and
I can't see Gentoo agreeing to accept direction from a commercial
parent. Secondly if the current team were to become the commercial
entity and spin off a free child, I can see from the attitudes of the
current devs that they are not focused on a highly polished and business
attractive product.  They're not interested in a flashy installer for
example (which is fine) or binary packages.

In fact, given the "love" that the collective devs have for DRobbins, I
can see them either say "no", or nothing at all.  Which means either
DRobbins, or someone else, will take Gentoo and fork it.  The two
distributions will probably grow to hate each other, although they may
occasionally share problems and fixes, but certainly neither will have
control or direction over the other.

-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

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