On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, Venkatesh Hariharan wrote:
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Brian Behlendorf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
$100K is totally pocket change, and I bet they bought over $1M worth of
positive PR from it - part of that value being your question, your
willingness to consider thinking differently about MS. That's gold they can
put in the bank.
The moot question for all of us is what leverage the $100K gets them within
the Apache Software Foundation. I'd love to know more on that.
The ASF's annual budget is extremely modest; there are no full-time paid
staff, the closest it comes to that is part-time paid sysadmin duties (as
last I heard). I don't recall the Google or Yahoo sponsorships of $100K
each suddenly causing the ASF to spend a lot more money; heck, I don't
even know if those commitments are renewable each year or not. AFAIK they
are viewed as lottery winnings to be put into the bank (or some investment
vehicle) to help build up the war chest in case the ASF is forced to spend
it to defend against a patent attack or something similar. I think Justin
Erenkrantz said something on stage with Sam about it allowing us to spend
a bit more money on sysadmin help. So for what I can tell, the money
translates into exactly zero leverage on the board. Tomorrow, if MS
pulled some anti-Apache action, the ASF would not hesitate to call them on
it; if someone brought to the incubator a project that would compete with
some MS technology, the sponsorship would not prevent it from moving
forward.
But I don't officially speak for the ASF board or membership.
Brian
