Re: Membership dues [ was: Re: Advisory Board Letter ]

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Mike Kestner <mkestner@ameritech.net> writes:

> Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> > I would like to see companies contribute by putting their engineers to
> > work on GNOME, or buying a contract or two for needed things on
> > sourceexchange or cosource, or hiring someone to write some docs, etc.
> > Heck they could even buy T-shirts and computer case stickers for all
> > the GNOME hackers.
> 
> Exactly.  I thought this effort was to legitimize the authority of the
> steering committee, provide a means for charitable contribution, and an
> avenue for companies to contact Gnome and show their support. Over the
> past week I've watched it grow into an employer with a 6 figure budget.
> 
> Bart expressed concerns about the time he and others have been putting
> into getting this started and wondering who will do that when they move
> on.  I thought the concept of the foundation was to be a point of
> contact, not a soliciter.  I would hope that a board of 9+ people would
> be able to handle the workload.
> 
> I strongly disagree with the direction this has been heading in the last
> week.
> 

I think we should charge companies a fee, but not because I think we
need a budget. I think we need it for them to measure some level of
seriousness. Given our ability to waive the fee in special cases, I
think having the fee will avoid a situation where a bunch of companies
join the advisory board just because they can. Corporations will take
something more seriously if they have put money into it.

$20/k/year buys a fifth of an employee, so I don't think raising the
idea of putting hackers/writers/etc on GNOME as the alternative makes
sense.

Although I do agree that having a bunch of money around raises the
problem of how to spend it.

Personally, I do think having an executive director could be helpful,
depending on the person. I don't think steercom does a great job of
taking care of it's current responsibilities that well by itself - we
are all hackers, and would rather code than organize or politick. I
don't think the foundation would be coming together at all right now
if it weren't for all the other people on various company payrolls
helping out.

 - Maciej