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

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> writes:

> > 3- it still gives us funds that we can use as necessary.  I suspect this
> > membership structure would probably generate $70,000 or so in the first
> > year.  We'll end up spending that money on conference calls, computers, legal
> > fees, press conferences etc. If we have a hard time spending this money, we
> > can always donate it to the FSF :)
> >
> 
> Right now all these costs are being covered without a foundation - and
> there's something healthy about that, even.

I am not sure about that. One concern that has been raised about
getting money from corporations is that we might be dependent on
it. But as it is, we are even more dependent on it - we need to ask
one company or another to foot the bill _each and every time_ we want
to do something that requires money. I think asking once a year is
better than asking each time we want to do something.


[.. proposal to budget up front, and split the budget by the number of
companies ...]

I think we might end up with a bunch of unforseen expenses. As Bart
suggested, if we end up with too much money lying around we can donate
it to the FSF or some other worthy cause.

 - Maciej