Re: [Gnustep-marketing] GNUstep Foundation

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-10-01 04:59:17 +0100 Gregory John Casamento 
<address@hidden> wrote:

> --- MJ Ray <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On 2004-09-30 17:03:26 +0100 Gregory John Casamento 
> > <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > I can...  Because it would be managed by people who have little to 
> > > do > 
> > > with the
> > > actual GNUstep project.
> > Huh? I would expect that to make the Foundation less legitimate in 
> > most 
> > people's eyes.
> I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here.  My point is that 
> by 
> keeping
> it with the maintainers of GNUstep itself, that it will be *more* 
> legitimate. 

This seems the opposite of your previous position to me.

> If the FSF runs it, they may not care about it as much as those 
> directly
> involved would.

Why do so many keep arguing against a proposal no-body made? I'm 
suggesting using FSF to accept the money, pay the bills and do the 
bureaucracy which comes from being a corporation. I am not suggesting 
letting FSF run the marketing effort or much else that people are 
arguing against. Please all try to stay on-topic.

This may not be possible, but it looks like no-one had even researched 
whether it is before supporting Alex Perez's statement "we need a 
GNUstep Foundation so we can handle money". If I've got that wrong, 
please point me at the documentation.

> > > > If visibility is the concern, does this need to be "GNUstep >> 
> > > > Foundation"
> > > > rather than "GNUstep Marketing Foundation" or "GNUstep Promotion
> > > > Association"?
> > > Similar to the GNOME Foundation and the Apache Foundation, yes it > 
> > > does.
> > Why? Just to ape GNOME?
> No.  Actually... if you had read the post I made previously, I said 
> we want to
> have a different structure than the GNOME Foundation as they 
> sometimes suffer
> from "design by committee".

Why does my reading your previous post change what you said? Are you 
just being rude and trying to suggest "this chap can't understand 
email"? If so, tough: I do understand it, but the structure is not 
strongly related to the name, other than as a suggestion of its aims.

> As for the name, I don't know how I would feel about something named 
> "GNUstep
> Marketing Foundation" or "The Foundation For the Promotion of 
> GNUstep". 
> "GNUstep Foundation" seems appropriate to me.

It depends what its aims are, but I suspect "GNUstep Marketing 
Association" is a better description of what we're trying to do.

I'm surprised that paying developers and contracting with outside 
companies has been mentioned as an expected function. Won't this 
foundation be directing development by specifying those contracts? Are 
you opposed to that?

> > I worry that marketing is trying to lead development, instead of 
> > assisting 
> > it. My question about verifying the suggested problems has gone 
> > unanswered 
> > as yet.
> This was my concern.  *PLEASE* read the previous post. [...]

You claim you're concerned, but if you are, *PLEASE* reply to my 
previous post about testing marketing hypotheses.

> [...] The foundation shall oversee ONLY the funds
> necessary to further GNUstep promotion and, possibly, be used to 
> contract with
> outside companies to help GNUstep improve.

If handling funds is its only role, it seems a good idea to 
investigate other host organisations before blindly creating another 
and having the administrative overhead hit our funds.

--
MJR/slef    My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
 Creative copyleft computing - http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
LinuxExpo.org.uk village 6+7 Oct http://www.affs.org.uk