[DotGNU]Re: DotGNU and business

[Norbert Bollow]

Peter Minten <address@hidden> wrote:

> I've been doing a little bit of thinking how a DotGNU corporation could work,
> though these are these are probably very naive.
>
> The idea is that we have a stock based corporation in which the FSF owns 51% 
> of the stocks.

So far the FSF has rejected all ideas that involved them holding
ownership of stock in such a company... they don't want to hold
_any_ stock in software companies, so that they can continue to
be as unbiased as possible in their role as "ethical umpire" for
free software.  

> The company is led democratically

It is pretty clear that democracy is the best available way to
rule a _country_ because, given the well-known weaknesses of
human nature, no politician can be trusted with absolute power,
and when a government goes astray, there is no way to "fork" the
country, or simply start a new country to replace it.

If we had a way to successfully start a big DotGNU-focused
company, then we'd have a similar situation, that we'd have
something valuable that cannot easily be replaced, and it'll
make sense to set up a democratic structure for that.  If you
have ideas for making such a start-up work out, please post them
for discussion on the Bizplan list.  (Hint: The hard part is
that for a big company, you need investors, and you'll have to
find a way to meet their needs.)

However, if instead of having a single large company, we have a
large number of companies which work together in a business
alliance, then we can get the size advantage of the large
company without the need for outside investors.  I think this is
the way to go.

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
Founder & Steering Committee member of http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet     (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59          Fax +41 1 972 20 69         http://norbert.ch
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