Daniel Robbins Resigns As Chief Gentoo Architect

bdowne01 writes "Gentoo Linux has experienced rapid growth in the past year--much to the credit of Daniel Robbins, the founder and Chief Architect of the project. Earlier today, he announced his resignation from his role on the gentoo-nfp mailing list." Tester adds "But before leaving, he has set up a non-profit foundation that will own all of the copyrights to Gentoo. The initial board of trustees will be appointed by Daniel, but next year they will be elected. The membership of the foundation will be open." Reader burnitall points out a note on the Gentoo homepage reading "... We are extremely sad to see Daniel Robbins depart, and we both wish him the best in his new endeavors and promise that the door will always be open for his return." Robbins' message also indicates he hopes to continue working on the release engineering aspect of Gentoo.

Comments

Gentoo Copyrights

[David Hume]

From the article:

But before leaving, he has set up a non-profit foundation that will own all of the copyrights to Gentoo.

Copyright Assignment to Gentoo

Gentoo Technologies Inc. Copyright Assignment Form

Gentoo Documentation Issues

Re:Gentoo

[caluml]

So? my apps will go 5% faster if I bother to wait 5000% more during the install?

Arrgh. Time to feed the trolls. Let me explain. After the install, you never actually wait for the packages to compile/install. You can use kde-3.2.0 while (should you feel the need to upgrade) you are compiling 3.2.2.
I've got you down as a friend, so you must have said something insightful in the past.

Purely Personal

[metallikop]

It seems like Daniel's reasons for leaving were purely personal/family related. Not that I can blame him

Here's a snippit:

"OK. The purpose of this is to allow me to continue to support my family by doing things like pay for a house, pay for food, and potentially pay off some of the $20,000 in debt I accumulated during my tenure as Chief Architect of Gentoo, etc."

From the weekly newsletter

[ChaserPnk]

This is from the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter:

"While Daniel Robbins is busy converting Gentoo into a not-for-profit
organisation on his side of the Atlantic, the German Gentoo developers
have finalised all the necessary steps for registering an almost identical
legal entity, called "eingetragener Verein" (registered association) under
the German law. It'll take the commercial courts another four to six weeks
to acknowledge the setup, but the association[11] is already operational,
has opened a bank account, and started raking in bushels of money via
their new online shop[12], whose main advantage over the Gentoo store[13]
in the US lies in its comparatively low-cost deliveries to customers in
Germany."

Re:Has any reason been given?

[arkhan_jg]

No details yet - but this
looks like it may well be part of the reason;
specifically, he cannnot (and should not) have to shoulder the financial risk necessary to shift gentoo to its full Not For Profit status.

Given that he has a young family to support, I for one can sympathise with his position.

There's going to be an official announcement once the dust settles slightly, but thisappears to be the live gentoo forum thread.

Go easy on it, the forums are pretty heavily loaded at the best of times, and the last thing the place needs is a full blown slashdotting!

Re:Gentoo corporation news.

[zenyu]

Why was Gentoo Technologies, Inc. initially set up as a for-profit company? It doesn't make sense. Since it was not a 501(c)(3) non-profit, donations to Gentoo Technologies, Inc. were not tax deductible. (Hell, it may have been the case that the donors were legally, albeit technically, responsible to pay gift tax on any donation over the annual limit.)

I don't know the particulars with Gentoo, but I was party to the creation of a not-for-profit last year and started a corporation some years ago. That experience leads me to believe expediancy may have been the reason. Establishing a corporation is just a matter of filling out some forms and sending them off to the state capital. Establishing a not-for-profit is a labor intensive and expensive process involving lots of lawyers and consultation with the IRS. For the not-for-profit we got pro-bono legal help, but even so it hardly seems worth it in retrospect.

Re:What is there to copyright?

[VValdo]

Stuff that is released under the GPL is still copyrighted. If it weren't, authors wouldn't be able to license it under the GPL or any other license. The whole point of the GPL is to say "you can license this copyrighted code, but under these conditions..." (where "these conditions" include an agreement to license any distributed contributions to the code under the GPL too)

That said, other non-GPL'd stuff regarding Gentoo might also be copyrighted. Like original documentation or scripts, configuration program, help files, etc..

W