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LinuxPPC Inc Becomes Non-Profit
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 many profitable Linux-based companies. Although the numbers aren't publicly available, I imagine RH was pofitable at some point before IPO. CheapBytes has been around quite some time. So has LinuxCentral. Walnut Creek is apparently making a profit off of Slackware, and my guess is Macmillian is making a profit off of Mandrake. There are more to Linux companies than just the overzealous corporations. To think that profits can only be made in corporations is short-sighted. There are many companies doing great things with Linux, and making money.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Linus' 2.4 doesn't even compile on the PowerPC. Even PowerPC trees that have 2.4 are quite on unstable. HFS is buggy, and HFS writes will cause kernel panics. Some iMacs randomly crash with Linux 2.4. And there are lots of other problems...
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.
I think your misunderstanding - He wants to retain control over his work on LinuxPPC. What's wrong with that? He's not saying he wants to force other people to do anything, just that
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.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I mean Red Hat, Caldera, VA Linux and all those guys have been non-profitable for a long time now...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I'm just waiting for Amazon to announce the same thing.
"Now that's a joke, son!"
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Their quality control could stand some improvement but, hey. ;-)
* Boy, those Germans have a word for everything!
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.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Such a shame that LinuxPPC is not _that_ great (imho).. Linux is GREAT on PPC processors, I love it.. but what you will find is that I run debian :) Sure, even unstable is a bit outdated on there, but the fact that you have even an outdated apt is SO nice! I could never imagine going to a redhat based install again. Debian has already been, an will remain free.
;)
:)
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
But it has been enough to cover the costs of eight staff members.
And the internet connection, and, oh, beer. An essential part of Linux development.
You mean the beer's not free?
air and light and time and space
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. 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.)
I noticed in the last few months that Macintoshes, PPC's, LinuxPPC and all are in the road of becoming nerds machine.
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
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
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. :-(
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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!)
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
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.
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treke