Re: [Gnustep-marketing] GNUstep Foundation

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-10-01 07:39:15 +0100 Nicolas Roard <address@hidden> wrote:

> Le 1 oct. 04, à 01:02, MJ Ray a écrit :
>> They should care/help because GNUstep is part of the FSF's GNU project. I 
>> think you are extrapolating too far from that one web page.
> they "should" care but they don't. They have enough work of their own, and 
> plenty of others projects to think about..

What are you basing this on? Why does everyone else seem to have "go away" 
emails from FSF, but no-one has posted one?

> ... ok... so, you agree that we need our own group for promote GNUstep, and 
> we need to do our own fundraising as well.
> Instead of doing that individually, it's then quite logical to create some 
> entity to do that. That's why we advocate a GNUstep Foundation.

The GNUstep Foundation was originally proposed only to handle funds, not to 
promote or do fundraising itself. I think I am justified in questioning this 
feature creep. Everyone seems to have their own different desires for a GNUstep 
Foundation, which makes discussing it like being swamped with custard: the only 
way out is to eat it, but I'm not hungry for it.

> If nobody really bother to use the FSF for doing the fundraising and the 
> promoting, it's quite logically because FSF and GNUstep has different goals, 
> and the FSF is not architectured to deal with that. [...]

Why is this logical? It hasn't happened, therefore this one reason is the 
cause?!?

Nevertheless, using the FSF for fundraising and promoting is not my proposal. 
Again, this has gone off-topic.

> And frankly, I prefer to have GNUstep people in charge of that than FSF 
> people not involved in the project.

Why would it not be FSF appointing people involved in the project, as present?

> I really don't understand your problem. You act like this foundation will be 
> totally separated from the project and like the people possibly in charge 
> won't be steppers, and that foundation could take over the project. [...]

That is how I have understood the explainations until today. According to 
those, the foundation will hire and fire developers, and the foundation must 
have non-developer managers to be seen as legitimate. I am worried that this 
foundation has the unthinking uncritical support of developers, so the real 
GNUstep will be left as a poor relation, like the AI lab after LMI and 
Symbolics.

> I don't really think we can have worse marketing than what we have now [...]

Marketing was not a suggested role of the foundation. Also, I think you are 
being rude to those who have tried in the past by calling their efforts 
"nothing".

We need to do more marketing, but setting up a corporation is a huge piece of 
work and long-term investment which will do little to help with it.

-- 
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