Re: Possible Partnership

[Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>]

Good news.  It's great to see that someone is finally tackling the job of 
building a "commercially marketed" distribution based on Debian.

I was thinking of doing the exact same thing here myself, but I have since 
decided to concentrate on other markets.

Some thoughts:

 - don't try to take contrib and non-free away from the core Debian project, 
   as they are needed as temporary dumping spots for packages that have 
   copyright problems that need to be sorted out.

 - the word "partnership" seems to imply that a special relationship exists:
   I'd use different language.  I think the Debian project should officially 
   support the efforts of people who want to create "value-added" 
   distributions, and vice-versa.

 - I can see some potential problems that may have to be sorted out:

    - what do you do with packages in the "core" Debian distribution that may 
      be buggy or may need "fixes"?  Do you work with the Debian maintainers, 
      and submit patches for them to incorporate into the base Debian package? 

      Or do you "roll your own"?  What if the Debian maintainer is 
      unresponsive?  Or what if there exist philosophical differences that 
      prevent a maintainer from accepting a patch?  If you do "roll your own", 
      does this create a problem for the original maintainer who will be 
      handling users who have attempted to upgrade from your version to 
his/her
      version?  Can dpkg be adapted to solve some of these problems?  Or maybe
      you just wash your hands of the core distribution, and just sell your
      product as an add-on?  Do you support all of the stuff in the core
      distribution -- even the stuff that isn't very good?  Where do you
      draw the line?

    - financial support of the Debian project.  I personally think that the
      Debian project should stay as far away as possible from handling lots
      of money.  I do think we need enough money to incorporate as a 
      non-profit, and register the Debian name.  A slush fund for other legal
      purposes would be nice too.  But I don't particularily like the idea of 
      using donated funds to run development.  If your company wants to fund
      development, I'd suggest funding developers of packages directly, or
      even doing it in-house.  I think the Debian project would welcome that.

    - If you are going to base the system on KDE, have you spoken with Troll
      Tech?  There's the rub with proprietary software -- now you're going to
      be subject to the whims of an outside company.  Of course, there's a
      much greater mark-up on proprietary software than there is on free
      software -- that should make the investors happy.  :-)

    - If you sell non-free software, but say you support free software -- 
      there is going to be an inevitable confict there.  Or do you stop
      promoting and selling a "cash cow" package when a free one comes
      along?  If you do, you are probably going to end up stunting the
      growth of your company.  Making money off of "free software" is a
      very real dilemma.  I think that Red Hat is taking the proper 
      approach (from a business perspective).  They have concentrated on
      establishing a "brand".  This enables them to sell something that 
      is normally free at a premium price.  Sort of like selling 
      water with the name "Evian" on it...

I'm just interested in seeing if you will say the right things.  :-)

Cheers,

 - Jim

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