On Mar 25, 2009, at 10:18 AM, Lanny Marcus <lmmailinglists at gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/3/25 Ralph Angenendt <ra+centos at br-online.de>: >> Ross Walker wrote: >>> How about forming a formal non-profit organization around CentOS >>> with >>> contributors. >> >> The question is "where". What counts as a non-profit in the US >> doesn't >> automatically count as one in Europe, for example - that's why >> there is >> a Fedora EMEA, too. Which really binds ressources - and the Fedora >> community is large. Yes, one could to talk to them to see how they >> did >> it, I know the people on their board. >> >>> If a movement like CentOS is going to survive it's going to have to >>> grow and the only way it can grow is by solicitating donations then >>> depending on the offered ones it recieves now. >> >> Do I smell a special interest group >> <http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup> here? > > Or another mailing list or IRC channel? If Ross is correct, and I hope > he is correct, that Google, Amazon, large ISPs, etc., would donate > $, wow. If they are using CentOS and they only contributed USD$1 for > each server, imagine how much $ that would be for the CentOS project. > :-) Obviously, more than one dollar per server is the goal. You would be surprised at how many vendors are using CentOS right now for large commercial endeavors and even commercial software packages (Citrix Xen). There is a phenominal need for an enterprise OS with long term support, but void of messy licensing and royalty fees striped of all intellectual property, and if these companies are using CentOS to fulfill that need then they have a vested interest to make sure it succeeds now and for the foreseeable future. To this end it would cetainly not be rude to ask these companies for appropriately sized donations to make sure CentOS keeps going strong, completely voluntary of course, anonymously if preferred, otherwise they can be prominantly listed as a valued supporter. Just before any of that happens some ground work, as Ralph pointed out, needs to be established. I think CentOS should be registered as a non-profit both in America/ Canada and in the European Union. Call it CentOS.org NA and CentOS.org EU. Maybe there is an attorney on the list that would like to donate some pro-bono work in putting together applications for each in return for a tax write-off (applicable when filing for 2009 of course!). -Ross