LinuxPPC Inc Becomes Non-Profit 41
LWN has an interview with Jason Haas where he talks about LinuxPPC and
going non-profit. He raises some good points and says some interesting things. Good luck to ya Jason! Someday I shall acquire a titanium powerbook, I shall bask in the glory of your toil. I hope LinuxPPC stays around for a long time.
Actually, there are a lot of profitable Linux (Score:2)
Re:2.4 for PPCs (Score:4)
So waiting on 2.4 is probably the safest, and smartest thing to do. Linux 2.2.18 is still a better choice for the majority of users.
Style (Score:1)
Travis
Re:Ambiguous answer in my opinion... (Score:3)
a) he wants to do LinuxPPC for a living
and
b) he doesn't want greedy stockholders telling him what to do
Free Software is about both control and no control. You control everything, but you don't control anything of anyone else. So, I don't see the inconsistency.
Re:Profit=none (Score:1)
Uh, there dabbling to the extent of modifing there primary OS [ibm.com] and associating Linux with it, making sure the words Linux compatibility exist with almost every line of computer that they make. (S/390^H^H^H^H^HZ90's, AS400's, RS/6000's, PC's, laptops, etc)...
To change nearly every line of computer, and much of your software (VAJ, Homesite, et al.) sounds like a bit more then dabbling.
Just to get things straight (Score:1)
LinuxPPC: RedHat based distro for Linux/PPC
Debian powerpc port: You guess
Most people mean Linux/PPC when they say LinuxPPC (this article is correct though :)
And oh, there are other distros for Linux/PPC...
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Re:Profit=none (Score:1)
Are you TRYING to prove my point. IBM may dabble in Linux, but it is far from a Linux centered company. That MAY change, but I would be very surprised if their Linux ventures are not highly subsidized welfare cases at this point.
Mouse?! (Score:1)
I mean you can, but you don't have to.
Drive... (Score:1)
I just think it's a bit silly...but they can do whatever they want with it, it's theirs. If it results in LinuxPPC actually being easy to install one day, more power to them;)
Re:Drive... (Score:1)
There actually was a time once not so very long ago that a good part of the reaon that people did good jobs was the pride in doing so.
Big deal... (Score:5)
Next up... (Score:3)
"Now that's a joke, son!"
Free the Penguins (Score:1)
Welcome to the club. LinuxPPC has some really good people and a nice product. I wish them well.
Re:More Information Available.... (Score:2)
Their quality control could stand some improvement but, hey. ;-)
* Boy, those Germans have a word for everything!
Re:2.4 for PPCs (Score:1)
Re:Big deal... (Score:1)
I'm not sure about Caldera, but I think it is owned by a for-profit organization. Don't quote me on it though.
Re:Big deal... (Score:2)
Re:Free? (Score:1)
1, off-topic? Please.
It should be (Score: 5, Hall of Fame Funny.)
PPC suprises (Score:1)
a better way to distribute ownership: chaorganize (Score:1)
[chaordic.org]
http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/what_des.html
http://www.partnershipway.org/unesco.html [partnershipway.org]
http://technocrat.net/947223068/index_html [technocrat.net]
Huh? Believe it or not, a *shared ownership* model organizes the most successful global enterprise on earth: VISA International.
http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/res_choasgood.ht
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/deehock.html [fastcompany.com]
http://visa.com/av/who/main.html [visa.com]
Dee Hock, who founded VISA, tells a bit of the story like this:
"In the strict legal sense, VISA was a non-stock, for-profit membership corporation. In another sense, it was an inside-out holding company in that it did not hold, but was held by its functioning parts. The financial institutions that create its products were, at one and the same time, its owners, its members, its suppliers, its customers, its subjects, and its superiors.
"It could not be bought, raided, traded, or sold, since ownership was in the form of perpetual, nontransferable rights of participation.
"VISA espoused no political, economic, social, or legal theory, thus transcending language, race, custom, and culture to successfully bring together people and institutions of every political, social, and religious persuasion.
"It went through a number of wars and revolutions, the belligerents continuing to share common ownership and never ceasing reciprocal acceptance of products, even though they were killing one another."
! Dee Hock estimates that if equitable ownership had been extended to merchants and card-holders, (all users), Visa would today be *four times* more successful today. !
Something to consider when deciding whether "for profit" or "non profit".. Neither And Both =)
Linux not-for-profits (Score:1)
Debian is and has always been non-profit, so it's not a new idea, but most (all?) other linux distribution producers are organized as for-profit enterprises.
Flip side... (Score:3)
After all, if the paychecks of the LinuxPPC folk depend, to great extent, on CD sales, then it is in their interests for there to be some degree of "churn." Frankly, your phrasing of:
applies pretty much just as much to LinuxPPC, "the nonprofit" as it does to RHAT et al.Consider it stipulated that the factor of third party shareholders deciding they want an extra million in sales goes away; that doesn't make the factor go away altogether.
In contrast, the would-be counterexample you cite, Debian, can "afford" to have rare new releases because a new release doesn't affect their finances at all because they don't directly sell CDs. That's not the same scenario that LinuxPPC has.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
LinuxPPC had commercial backing though, i still don't see a helixcode/ximian release for ppcDebian.. oh well, perhaps now LinuxPPC will lose their support too ?
If only LinuxPPC had been wise and used debs
Cool (Score:1)
Free? (Score:4)
And the internet connection, and, oh, beer. An essential part of Linux development.
You mean the beer's not free?
2.4 for PPCs (Score:1)
The plan should be:
1. Wait til 2.4.1 gets out
2. Test it a month or two
3. Release next version of LinuxPPC
This chain of events would make many PPC Linux users very happy.
Profit=none (Score:1)
Going the way of most Linux centered companies, no profit! (Yeah, yeah, I know IkkyIkkyPitangNiWoo Corp made ten bucks last year...)
sweet (Score:1)
More Information Available.... (Score:5)
I think the move to a non-profit organization is more fitting with the ideals of the Free Software movement, and it's going to let LinuxPPC find capital through donations and grants, but still be able to control the distribution instead of giving power to VC's. A very nice move.
Jason's a great guy to talk to, and really a lot of fun to work with. I think we'll be seeing good things from the LinuxPPC gang for a long time.
(And Taco, check out last night's episode of The Mac Show [macshowlive.com]. They talked to a guy from the Int'l Titanium Assoc. and he talked about how to anodize the TiBook's case to create some a cool custom looking PowerBook.)
Half-off-topic note. (Score:2)
Being myself a big fan of this stuff, I'm quite happy to see geeks realize there's life after Intel/AMD.
Now, what is the reason of this move (in the right direction) ? Is it because of Apple producing damn good hardware (God knows my iBook rules)? Or because of MacOS X being built on a sane basis? Or something else?
And... Congrats to Jason for all he has been achieving these last months.
Stéphane
Re:Free? (Score:1)
> You mean the beer's not free?
LMAO.
Things like this demand a Slashdot Hall of Fame.
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Ambiguous answer in my opinion... (Score:1)
Haas: "Control. A non-profit organization has no owners. A for-profit corporation is partially owned by the stockholders, who may be people that may not have the best interests of Linux in mind. They may not even know what Linux is."
To me it's quite hard to accept as an answer just because it's _free_software_ ! Free-Software doesn't allow much control by nature because as soon as you are not happy with a free-software project, you can start another f.s. project on the top of the other one with your own ideas. Secondly - for instance - imagine that Red Hat or Mandrakesoft, which are pure example of pure free-software companies with profit interest (they release all their code as GPL),imagine they die: their work wouldn't be lost, everything could survive. My feeling is hard to explain, but I don't believe in Haas' argument here, just because it's free-software. Anyway, LinuxPPC going non-profit is ok to me - there are different ways of life! :-)
2.4 *does* work with LPPC (Score:1)
Re:Profit=none (Score:1)
Uh, I think IBM [ibm.com] made a bit more then $10 last year....
Re:Ambiguous answer in my opinion... (Score:2)
The point he makes is that a non-profit organization isn't attractive as an 'investment' to people interested in speculating on changes in price of the stock.
There is no "stock," no opportunity for those kinds of gains, and hence a whole host of things that occur in "public" corporations have no reason to occur:
A non-profit that isn't purchasable just isn't an attractive target for a number of such strategies that are generally oriented to for-profit public corporations.
That's not to say that the move to non-profit is an unalloyed benefit; a different set of "political" issues raise their ugly heads in non-profit organizations. :-(
Re:Profit=none (Score:1)
Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity
Titanium PB (Score:4)
Taco hath said:
Why? That Titanium PB is made for OS X -- try some BSD-lovin, and you'll never go back to the Dark Side of the Source, Linux.
(gentlemen, start your flamethrowers!)
Re:More Information Available.... (Score:1)
Forgive my clubieness on this topic, but are any other distros organized as NPOs? Is this an innovation?
Regardless of the answer, I agree with your sentiments -- NPO based distros might be a very good thing for OSS over the long haul.
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Re:Ambiguous answer in my opinion... (Score:2)
I really don't think it's ambigous. Since it's free software he doesn't have total control, but he does have control over what is released. RedHat, Mandrake, Cladera, and other comercial distrobutions have to protect their shareholder's investment, and may be pressured into going a more profitable directionw in the their distro rather than what they see as the being the way to go in terms of quality. Take RedHat's release schedule. They have to sell distros and support to pay the workers, so they need to get a product out the door. And in some cases it may mean it's released than it really should be. RedHat 7 is the perfect example. It's a very nice distrobution, but it was released sooner than it should be.
Non Profit distrobution like Debian have more free dom to do what they want. Debian has a much longer development cycle, which shows in the end product, but they couldnt do it if they were being pressured by the need to pay raise shareholder value. The only thing that decides how Debian develops is the wishes of the developers and the users.
The pressure of trying to sell a distribution for a profit does have one upside that doesn't seem as apparent in the non-profit side is the flash of distributions like RedHat and Mandrake. They both have a little touch that makes them look more like comercial products. The packaging, manuals, the nice installers. Thhese are missing in Debian(although I think woody is getting a new installer) and Slackware and the like.
Commercial distributions have their place, mainly in making the public more aware of Linux by getting it on store shelves next to the copies of Windows, but it's harder for them to control how development is going to need to proceed.
e
treke
Re:PPC (Score:1)
PPC means PowerPC, an RISC chip technology developed jointly by Motorola and IBM, mostly used in Apple Macintoshes. Everything from the 601 to the 750 (Is that G3 or G4? I forget) uses "PowerPC" technology.
Re:Why does ONLY linux PPC deal with HFS disks? (Score:1)
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch