Fedora and the world

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I understand things, Fedora as a project has no monetary control.
> The money comes from Red Hat and is held in Red Hat accounts.

Yes, I have to blackmail Max or Greg or Paul when I want to see a
monies expended on some sort of initiative. Blackmail, sweet-talk or
physically threaten, I'll use which every technique works best for
each one of them.

>
> There was discussion at long time ago about creating a Fedora
> Foundation, however that proved to be not worth the effort.

I think there is a stronger statement to be made than "not worth the
effort."  It's quite possibly impossible to do as a US non-profit when
Red Hat's contributions to the project's actual resource consumption
is tallied given the requirements for non-profit status.  And a
separate for-profit status doesn't actually give us much more than
what we have right now, except increased staffing needs to act as a
separate business office.

The real question is, and continues to be, can we carve out a place
inside the current financial structure that we can solicit funds from
other entities beside Red Hat meant directly to be spent of community
initiatives.  It's a completely unanswered question, and we won't know
the answer until someone steps forward saying they are willing to drop
money into the hands of the Fedora project, to be dispersed by the
Fedora Board or other entity delegated by the Board, to meet some sort
of objective.  Non-profit status is just not going to happen, because
Red Hat is too heavily invested in the day-to-day costs of Fedora
operations to stand Fedora up as an independent entity.  If there are
entities out there who would like to give up some funding, I'd very
much like to have a conversation with them as to what conditions would
make them comfortable doing so..that does not involve a non-profit
status.

-jef