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Gentoo Officially Not-For-Profit
iswm writes "The paperwork for the Gentoo Not-For-Profit entity was approved by the State of New Mexico today. This means that as of today, the Gentoo Foundation is an official Not-For-Profit Corporation in the United States. The process of becoming a Federally-recognized not-for-profit entity, which will take about six months for approval, can now begin."
Hey, this makes them tax exempt. Way to save money!!!!!
Evolution or ID?
...how long will it take to compile the documentation to make Gentoo a not-for-profit organization?
Remember that Gentoo now supports binary packages for those giant software such as KDE and OpenOffice.org. Also check the Wikipedia article about Gentoo.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
By the time my current compile finishes, Gentoo will be a Federally-recognized not-for-profit. Woohoo!
does this mean donations will be tax deductible?
Damn, I left my good sig in my other pants
Celebrate by Donating to Gentoo
Then how do they square the fact that it's used by Linus, Robbins, Stalman and all those other agents of God eh?
Will the government remove their not for prophet status if they discover how deep the OSS religion goes?
Beep beep.
This isn't really a story, since as the summary states, they still have 6 months. This shouldn't have been run until then! What if something comes up in the mean time?
stuff |
As far as Linux and Gentoo are concerned this can only be a good thing and it is certainly a very positive step. For those interested in finding out a bit more about what this actually means here are a couple of Wikipedia links:
Non Profit Corporations
Non Profit Organizations
So what niche is Gentoo aimed at? Mandrake is for n00bs, Redhat's for suits, Slack is for people who have an unhealthy obsession with config files.
I've been looking for a new distro lately. Where does Gentoo fall in this list?
Love your country always, but respect your government only when it deserves it. -- Mark Twain
No, obviously now it's:
1) fetch packages
2) compile
3) ???
4) !PROFIT
Some troll^Wone ought to tell them that "not for profit" status is a terrible way to make money, then.
This is where the serious fun begins.
I personally love Gentoo, hopefully now that they won't have to pay taxes and get other benefits they will be able to give the Gentoo users a little bit more, although they've been doing a great job so far. And for people who don't know what Gentoo is, since it's pretty popular but not everyone knows about it. It is a Linux OS that compiles most packages (except for open office, unless you're crazy, like me). Take a look at it here.
Why the rush and excitement over being able to say that you make no money? How about charging people for Gentoo, making a profit on it, and creating wealth, instead of a non-quantifiable warm & fuzzy feeling? I'm sure this will instantly be modded Troll, Flamebait, or Heresy, but I don't understand the pride people have in being able to declare that they make no money.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I knew Daniel Robbins was an Albuquerque resident, and has since quit Gentoo, but I didn't know/think they still would pursue NM tax free status.
Not at all. For profit is just about how proceeds are handled within the company. Non profit CEOs can still make plenty of money and pay their employees well. Its more or less just a tax code definition rather than the charity type connotation that you seem to associate with the term.
--Kevin
Making these jokes is getting to be worse than the zealots who made the ill-advised compiler flag comments in the first place.
Gentoo is an impressive distribution, although admittedly it has its faults (find me a distribution that doesn't). I'm glad I got to experiment with it before it became fashionable to make derogatory jokes about it. Tthere's a fair chance all the +5 funny/insightful diminishing comments might have deterred me.
Gentoo users have a unhealthy obsession with last hour' releases and broken brand new software. (BTW, gentoo running here)
I see it as a tax-code definition (otherwise they'd presumably just become a charitable foundation?), but I also don't see gentoo.org sitting down and deciding "let's become a not-for-profit so our CEO can get rich quick." I could be completely wrong, but my understanding of Gentoo is that they took this course for stability rather than greed.
This is where the serious fun begins.
or an especially smart businessman, could someone explain why Gentoo made this move at this time? BTW, I DO understand the contradiction with the name.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
What? Are you compiling on some kind of ancient ENIAC machine?
Good on you Gentoo team - I wish you every success.
I might even put my money where my mouth is onces it's tax deductable.
Any plans to do the same in Europe?
----
I think there are several people that do not understand what a Not for Profit company really means. Not for Profit doesn't mean they do not make money it only means that they cannot have 'extra cash' on hand at the end of their fiscal year. They can still have money in savings because you can budget money into saving. Also at times, working for a NFP company can be a benifit since they can't have 'extra cash' then they sometimes pay really well.
Take Blue Cross Blue Shield (an American insurance company), they are actually a NFP organization. Most people don't realize this but it is true.
Art by Mindy Herman, my wife.
Yes, and when I go in to work this morning the Slack box kicked under my desk will have 273 days of uptime.
And yes, it will be running.
Slackware: When you want to get the work done.
Gentoo is a lot more sophisticated than most of my former employers, though.
They didn't get non-profitable status legally established until the bankruptcy hearings.
I mean, with all the latest press saying that "Linux is a Religion, not an OS", you'd think that they'd get non-profit status as a church or something.
They are American , isn't not-for-protif implied. 'The estimated population of the United States is 294,256,444 so each citizen's share of this debt is $24,535.31.'
I don't think you understand how the national debt works: it is like a credit card. We just keep charging to it, and eventually, when it gets too high, our daddy will come in and pay it off for us. Hopefully he will buy us a new car then too.
...are the "employees" of that organization! They make sure that they get very nice salary checks and their board, of course. All those donation hours will really help keep their costs down.
I guess someone finally found a sustainable business model for LINUX. At least they found one for themselves.
Free, untaxable, funroll-loops for the rest of us!
try this strange brew, that's good for you, & freely distributable too.
emerge government-funding
Congratulations on joining the illustrious ranks of such heavy hitters as Nortel, Novell, and SCO.
... except (of course) the guys at SCO, who seem to be basing their business decisions on the wisdom of the Magic 8-Ball.
Of course, these guys aren't TRYING to be non-profit
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Another one giving up mod to reply...
The real problem is a hijacking of the concept of 'money'. 'Money' was originally meant to be a means of extended barter. You need a chicken, I need work done on my house, but I have spare corn instead of a chicken. We could find a third party that needs corn, and has a chicken. Or we could come up with 'money' that lets us extend our barter system into a marketplace, and allows all goods to become more liquid.
Unfortunately, for some people money has turned into a measure of self-esteem. They're not even collecting castles, or jet planes, or home theaters, or any sort of goods, any more. They measure their success by incrementing digits.
Also unfortunately, as much as we'd like to think of the economy as an expanding pie that has room for everyone to get as much as they want without depriving others, it just isn't. Though there is some expansion, the finite size of the pie is painfully apparent to many. In order for the more successful to tick their digits upward, they end up taking away from others. In other terms, this can be called 'downsizing', 'offshoring', 'making benefits competitive', and the like.
Why this use of money is bad is that it's so easy to tick digits upward. Had these people been accumulating toys and property, it would be more obviously outrageous.
The nifty thing about a gift economy is that it lets you measure your self-esteem through contribution. But it does need to piggyback on top of a money economy, because goods in the real world aren't free, and we all need to eat and get out of the rain.
Finding the balance between gift and money economies, and getting Joe 6pak to buy into that balance, is the task for TruenGenius.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Debian unstable or testing cover that. I don't know how those optimizations were done in the tests, but all the benchmarks I've seen so far Debian is the winner.
I'm a Debian/Slack/freeBSD user who will give Gentoo a shot sometime soon. One think I'd love to do is establishing some kind of standarized benchmarks. Uptime is not everything for the desktop.
So what is so great about Gentoo as a Desktop and bad about Debian. I use Debian as a Desktop and it is great. The only gripe I have is it is a bit fiddly to set up X, but with Knoppix (which is Debian based) this is partly solved (i.e. I steel its XFree86-4 file).
As far as I am concerned to be good for Desktop it should be relatively easy for the first time Desktop novice to get it working, from what I here Gentoo requires more time/teche effort to get installed so how could it be a better Desktop GNU/Linux?
Don't get me wrong I have heard a lot of great things about Gentoo but ease of first install is not one of them.
Can Slashdot finally get a Gentoo icon now? One of these days you really think it should...
(insert joke that the Gentoo icon is still compiling here...)
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Right. It just seems that all too often people tend to equate non profit with charitable and sometimes it irks me :-)
--Kevin
except thats exactly what the blurb says
In Sweden it takes 0.1 second to create a non-profit organisation.... You in USA are so slow....
Would this mean that Gentoo could take over the world like Visa did?
It took quite some time till this obvious joke emerged.
They just can't pay a return on the money they make. They can disburse it charitably, reinvest it, etc. There is such a tough regimen of oversight in the American non/not-for profit. If only Enron and those evil fucks had to live by a 503's rules.
I used to run a non-profit environmental journal. We made money on occasion and when we had excess we had this nifty idea called: giving it to the poor. Problem is: that makes you a hell-bound commie in Merika.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Does anyone else, "officially", not give a shit?
We live in a climate and culture where a young man like Bill Gates can become unimaginably rich by first buying someone else's work and fobbing it off on the public, but where people of vision like Daniel Robbins nearly loses everything he has trying to bring to the public a product that will benefit everyone.
Donate to Gentoo, I did, and even if I gave them $100 a year, it'd STILL be a much better deal than if I was able to get Windows for free, forever.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Just kidding, I know nothing about it, but the pun had to be said :-P
Their nationwide non-profit status is still compiling ;)
presmike
I'm personally thankful that the "powers that be" at Gentoo have the "Gentoo GNU/Linux Social Contract". If you're running another distro you really need to check Gentoo out. Gentoo's future is quite bright.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
But didn't Microsoft start in Albuquerque, New Mexico?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Not-for-profit, eh? Underpants throughout the land breath a sigh of relief!
zach
But gentoo is my church!
Non-profit as in reaally non profit? Or non-profit as in United Wayyyyy non-profit?
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Orthogonally, some non/nots are more efficient
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
BTW, churches usually don't try to get 501(c)3 status, although the charitable organzations they run often do. See this FAQ for details.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Tell ya what, if you ever make money again, you can donate it to the organization I work for and I personally vouch that we won't call you a commie.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
You are on.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Where in the world did you get THAT from? Even concerning the world's richest capitalist, Bill Gates, his strategy included making his employees filthy stinking rich, more so than any other company ever. Some of his janitors made millions. That's hardly "concentrating all of the wealth in one person".
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Wow....even Gentoo's website can be slashdotted. Hmm.. does that mean that there werent as many gentoo users as i thought it should be?
Carpe Diem: Seize The Day!
No such thing, bub - only redistribution of it. Who needs a billion sq.foot house when you most likely won't see half of it? Just pointless.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
A neeeeeeeeeeeeew televions set
but wait, there's more. If you get this skill testing question right, you and your wife could be off for a weekend iiiiiiiiiin reno
there you can loose all your cash and teh game starts all over again
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Gentoo is what it is. I like it, I use it. It works for me. I like how easy updating it and installing new software is. Other people like it for other reasons, or just to (think they are) cool.
The niche finds the distribution, rather then the other way around. Linux is really awesome like that, you can use it for whatever you want to use it for.
You can put Mandrake on all your servers and Redhat on all your workstations if you want to. You can put Gentoo on the firewalls and SuSE on the mail server. Whatever you want.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The American way is to live like a king, declare bankruptcy, get tons of credit card companies begging for your business, out of bankruptcy seven years later, wash, lather, rinse, repeat.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
#slackware on efnet 4-22-04 12:57 am EST -5.00t ) has joined #slackware
<mfbian_> how will you compare slackware and freebsd
<Cheethoe> apples and oranges
<mfbian_> fair enough
<`justin`> slackware = for people that have been molested freebsd = people that want to molest their mothers
<`justin`> openbsd = for people that probably wont ever get molested
<`justin`> netbsd = molesting of all minorities, and cock asians
<mfbian_> how about gentoo
<`justin`> I dont know ask khai
--> biggy (something@1Cust26.tnt1.columbus.in.da.uu.net) has joined #slackware
<`justin`> oh wait I do know
<mfbian_> you don't know anything
--> supergoad (~supergoad@pcp08611785pcs.waldrf01.md.comcast.ne
<`justin`> mfbian_: gentoo = people that want to molest their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, dogs, but can't get it up
original here
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I use both Debian testing (Sarge) and Gentoo 2004.0, just recently installed (two different machines)
It's frustrating, because I have to choose one or the other; I like them both so much.
The thing I like about Gentoo is that it is much easier (some folks actually recommend) to keep current "piecemeal", which would be better for dialup. You can update one package at a time, or, more precisely, one package and its dependencies at a time.
Debian is sort of easiest (in my experience) to upgrade all at once, which, depending on the last time you upgraded your system, might require some serious downloading of stuff. There are many benefits, especially if you just want to do it and get it over with, to upgrading all at once, but this whole process is made significantly faster and easier if you have a fast connection.
I think Debian Sarge and Gentoo are both excellent, but if I had to use dial-up, I would be tempted to go with Gentoo because the upgrades are easier to do package by package, and I could just run an update to a package in the background every now and then. The command-line nature of emerge and the --pretend switch are extremely helpful in picking and choosing exactly what you want to update, port by port. And the forums, and the installation instructions are just downright wonderful.
1. Form Not-For-Profit Corporation
:P
2. ???
3. Profit!
That's the first thing that came to my mind. Oh, what a simple mind I have.
For tax-breaks and tax-breaks alone. Take away the incentive and the money dries up. We'll just settle on "hell-bound," MmmKay?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.