Henning Makholm writes: > If that's the only problem, then why not simply > > 1. keep the Debian development structure as it is. > > 2. someone who cares about it forms a company that produces CDs from > the official CD immages and markets them, shrink-wrapped and with > lots of pomp, circumstance and generally commercial gestures. > > 3. if the company makes a profit, then congratulations to those who > put money into it at the beginning. They might want to contribute > some of it to the Debian project (c/o SPI). > > 4. if the company finds it will be good for marketing to have this > or that gadget which is not currently packaged, they'd hire a > programmer to package (and possibly develop) it - that programmer > would register as a Debian developer and have his usual say in > Debian matters. > > Nothing of this needs any formal decision on behalf of the Debian > project itself. The free software nature of Debian has always > encouraged this sort of things. All it takes is for some people to > get together and raise enough initial capital for producing the > first round of CDs and lanuch the initial marketing boost.
I like this idea a lot. It would be similar to what Cygnus is doing with the GNU development tools, this didn't affect the way the FSF operates either. Such a company could also offer support for debian. I think support is wat will get debian into companies, and make it more mainstream. If you feel that is important/interesting to you, there really is nothing in the DFSG that would stop you from doing it. Eric Meijer -- E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | tel. office +31 40 2472189 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (TAK) | tel. fax +31 40 2455054
