On Fri, 28 Nov 2014, Roger Leigh wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 08:08:43AM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > Sorry, but when the only public facing web page for the site is a
> > manifesto, with no names attached, and a button asking for
> > donations, with no name or organization attached, that kind of
> > raises lots of questions and doubts about putting much effort into a
> > project.
> > [...]
> > If you're for real, please take this as a word to the wise.
>
> I certainly agree here. Particularly when it comes to accepting
> donations, accountability and transparency *are* important. This
> information is absent:
>
> - the organisation receiving the money
> - information about the organisation itself, including who is
> running it and who will be responsible for the finances
> - what the donations will be used for


you are right. Thanks for making a calm point, but also Miles had
reasons to be upset. Whoever concerned about the reasons to "fork"
should be very attentive about the "financial" passage. Also considering
that there are some companies with big bucks at the moment holding their
horses, since this systemd thing is really breaking the eggs in a lot of
baskets.

So well one thing we did and is reflected on the donation page: Dyne.org
is handling the finances. I'm its legal representative (there is also a
board of course) and we are speaking about a regularly registered
non-profit (Dutch stichting) with FOSS development as a mission in its
statute, operating since 2000, paying its taxes and recently also
working as research organization under the FP7/CAPS program of the EU
commission. Even if you don't trust me (and I understand, since there
isn't really a good publicity being done right now judging from the
reddit thread...) you can just consider we have too much to loose in
wrapping this up as a scam and running away with the bucks.

Said that, I think organizations are in place also to avoid personal
attacks and give people warranty that pacts hold beyond the actions of a
single person. That is also what Dyne.org is, for the collectivity it
represents. I disagree that anonymity is a bad move, just look at
thread on Reddit today:
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2nm2u9/theyre_going_to_fork_debian/
many personal attacks to denigrate the project and reduce it to the only
person that is visible.

Not a big problem in my case really: haters are going to hate. Maybe
I'll get the wikipedia page about me deleted and this will be just fine,
I still have a reasonable "SEO" on my name that lets me professionally
survive the shitstorm.

But think if you would be a young maintainer or DD having his/her name
targeted by these tugs? it would be real hard to cleanup your name from
Internet's history, to say the least. I think anonymity is necessary for
some members in this phase and I say that also having followed the sort
of arguments around systemd being usually made in public.

Now since I'm already exposed I volunteer to be a spokesperson for this
project as long as noone complains about it. I am also very grateful for
your letter Roger and think that you are a perfect reference for this
project, both technically and publicly.

ciao

p.s. one more about the money: the fundraiser we had for Dyne.org in
2013 never really completed in two years. We are somehow lovely, but
marginal. I ended up chipping in 2500€ from my pockets just this year to
keep up the whole infrastructure and it has always been a bit so. Many
other members do self-taxation. There are also developers within our
group doing quite radical choices in life and we struggle to keep them
alive and kicking with volunteer refunds. We also do stuff in Debian
BTW, upstream and DDs and such (but beware Dyne.org != debianfork, we
are all free to have different perceptions) still after 14 years the
money has never been enough for our tribes. We even had to put up damn
ads on the dynebolic page. I don't like that, but it's just coming out
of a period in which I've lost my employement some time ago. Now I'm not
saying this to beg money from the Devuan project: it will be entirely
spent for it, but I'm just saying that life is not always easy at the
margins of the jetset if you want to grow your software projects and
setting up donations in time of popularity can really help. Just like a
kickstarter, we have even less intermediaries here (its just Dyne.org
and Stripe) and with a budget we can be way more operative as things are
needed to be bought, I guess that will be mostly infrastructure.
Actually I'd be also in favour to spend money in calling in some experts
to help plan and develop critical parts of Devuan. That can be debated I
guess.

Longest p.s. of my life, damn. epic tl;dr. Sorry.

Ciao.



--
Jaromil, Dyne.org Free Software Foundry (est. 2000)
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