Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/03/13/linux-foundation-community-bridge.html

[ This blog post was co-written by me and Karen M. Sandler, with input from
Deb Nicholson, for
our Conservancy
blog, and that its canonical location. I’m reposting here just for
the convenience of those who are subscribed to my RSS feed but not get
Conservancy’s feed. ]

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation (LF) launched a new service, called
“Community Bridge” — an ambitious
platform that promises a self-service system to handle finances, address security issues, manage CLAs and license compliance, and also bring mentorship to projects. These tasks are difficult work that typically require human intervention, so we understand the allure of automating them; we and our peer organizations have long welcomed newcomers to this field and have together sought collaborative assistance for these issues. Indeed, Community Bridge’s offerings bear some similarity to the work of organizations like Apache Software Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF), the GNOME Foundation (GF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and Conservancy. People have already begun to ask us to compare this initiative to our work and the work of our peer organizations. This blog post
hopefully answers those questions and anticipated similar questions.

The first huge difference (and the biggest disappointment for the entire FOSS community) is that LF’s Community Bridge
is a proprietary software system. §4.2 of
their Platform
Use Agreement requires those who sign up for this platform to agree to
a proprietary software license, and LF has remained silent
about the proprietary nature of the platform in its explanatory materials. The LF, as an organization dedicated to Open Source, should release the source for Community Bridge.
At Conservancy, we’ve worked since 2012 on
a Non-Profit Accounting Software system,
including creating
a tagging system for transparently documenting ledger transactions, and
various support
software around that. We and SPI both now use these methods daily. We also funded the creation of
a system to
manage mentorship programs, which we now runs the Outreachy mentorship program. We believe
fundamentally that the infrastructure we provide for FOSS fiscal
sponsorship (including accounting, mentorship and license compliance) must itself be FOSS, and developed in public as a FOSS
project. LF’s own research already shows that transparency is impossible for systems that are not FOSS. More importantly, LF’s new software could directly benefit so many
organizations in our community, including not only Conservancy but also
the many others (listed above) who do some form of fiscal sponsorship. LF shouldn’t behave like a proprietary software company like Patreon or
Kickstarter, but instead support FOSS development.
Generally speaking, all Conservancy’s peer organizations (listed above) have been fully dedicated to the idea that any infrastructure
developed for fiscal sponsorship should itself be FOSS. LF has deviated
here from this community norm by unnecessarily requiring FOSS developers to use proprietary software to receive these services, and also failing to collaborate over a FOSS
codebase with the existing community of organizations. LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said that he “wants more participation in open source … to advance its sustainability and … wants organizations to share their code for the benefit of their fellow [hu]mankind”; we ask him to apply these principles to his own organization now.

The second difference is that LF is not a charity, but a trade association
— designed to serve the common business interest
of its paid
members, who control its Board of Directors. This means that donations
made to projects through their system will not be tax-deductible in the
USA, and that the money can be used in ways that do not necessarily benefit
the public good. For some projects, this may well be an advantage: not all
FOSS projects operate in the public good. We believe charitable commitment
remains a huge benefit of joining a fiscal sponsor like Conservancy, FSF, GF, or SPI.
While charitable affiliation means there are more constraints on how projects can spend
their funds, as the projects must show that their spending serves the public
benefit, we believe that such constraints are most valuable. Legal
requirements that assure behavior of the organization always benefits the
general public are a good thing. However, some projects may indeed prefer to
serve the common business interest of LF’s member companies rather than
the public good, but projects should note such benefit to the common
business interest is mandatory on this platform —
it’s explicitly
unauthorized to use LF’s platform to engage in activities in conflict with
LF’s trade association status). Furthermore, (per
the FAQ) only one maintainer
can administer a project’s account, so the platform currently only
supports the “BDFL”
FOSS governance model, which has already been widely discredited. No
governance check exists to ensure that the project’s interests align with
spending, or to verify that the maintainer acts with consent of a larger
group to implement group decisions. Even worse, (per §2.3 of the Usage Agreement) terminating the relationship means ceasing use of the account; no provision allows transfer of the money somewhere else when projects’ needs change.

Finally, the LF offers services that are mainly orthogonal and/or a
subset of the services provided by a typical fiscal sponsor. Conservancy,
for example, does work to negotiate contracts, assist in active
fundraising, deal with legal and licensing issues, and various other
hands-on work. LF’s system is similar to Patreon and other platforms in
that it is a hands-off system that takes a cut of the money and provides
minimal financial services. Participants will still need to worry about
forming their own organization if they want to sign contracts, have an
entity that can engage with lawyers and receive legal advice for the project, work through governance issues, or the many
other things that projects often want from a fiscal sponsor.

Historically, fiscal sponsors in FOSS have not treated each other as
competitors. Conservancy collaborates often with SPI, FSF, and GF in
particular. We refer applicant projects to other entities, including
explaining to applicants that a trade association may be a better fit for
their project. In some cases, we have even referred such
trade-association-appropriate applicants to the LF itself, and the LF then
helped them form their own sub-organizations and/or became LF Collaborative
Projects. The launch of this platform, as proprietary
software, without coordination with the rest of the FOSS organization
community, is unnecessarily uncollaborative with our community and
we therefore encourage some skepticism here. That said, this new
LF system is probably just right for FOSS projects that (a) prefer to use
single-point-of-failure, proprietary software rather than FOSS for their infrastructure, (b) do not
want to operate in a way that is dedicated to the public good, and (c) have very minimal
fiscal sponsorship needs, such as occasional reimbursements of project
expenses.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/12/15/what-debian-does.html

I woke up early this morning, and those of you live above 45° parallel
north or so are used to the “I’m wide awake but it’s still dark as
night” feeling in the winter. I usually don’t turn on the lights,
wander into my office, and just bring my computer out of hibernate; that
takes a bit as my 100% Free-Software-only computer is old and slow, so I
usually go to make coffee while that happens.

As I came back in my office this morning I was a bit struck by both
displays with the huge Debian screen lock image, and it got me thinking of
how Debian has been my companion for so many years.
I spoke about this at
DebConf
15 a bit, and wrote
about a similar concept years before. I realize that it’s been almost
nine years that I’ve been thinking rather deeply about my personal
relationship with Debian and why it matters.

This morning, I was inspired to post this because, echoing back to my
thoughts at my DebConf 15 talk, that I can’t actually do the work I do
without Debian. I thought this morning about a few simple things that
Debian gets done for me that are essential:

• Licensing assurance. I really can trust that Debian will not put
  something in main that fails to respect my software
  freedom. Given my lifelong work on Free Software licensing, yes, I can
  vet a codebase to search for hidden proprietary software among the Free,
  but it’s so convenient to have another group of people gladly do that job
  for me and other users.
• Curated and configured software, with connection to the
  expert. Some days it seems none of the new generation of
  developers are a fan of software packaging anymore. Anytime you want to
  run something new these days, someone is trying to convince you to
  download some docker image or something like that. It’s not that I don’t
  see the value in that, but what I usually want is that software I just
  read about installed on my machine as quickly as possible. Debian’s
  repository is huge, and the setup of Debian as a project allows for each
  package maintainer to work in relative independence to make the software
  of their interest run correctly as part of the whole. For the user, that
  means when I hear about some interesting software, Debian immediately
  connects me, via apt, with the individual expert who knows about that
  software and my operating system /
  distribution both. Apt, Debian’s Bug Tracker, etc. are actually a
  rudimentary but very usable form of a social networking that allows me to
  find the person who did the job to get this software actually working on
  my system. That’s a professional community that’s amazing
• Stability. It’s rather amusing, All the Debian
  developers I know run testing on their laptop and stable only on their
  servers. I run stable on my laptop. I have a hectic schedule and always
  lots of work to do that, sadly, does not usually include “making my
  personal infrastructure setup do new things”. While I enjoy that
  sort of work, it’s a rabbit hole that I rarely have the luxury to enter.
  Running Debian stable on my laptop means I am (almost) never surprised by
  any behavior of my equipment. In the last nine years, if my computer does
  something weird, it’s basically always a hardware problem.

Sure, maybe you can get the last two mostly with other
distributions, but I don’t think you can get the first one anywhere
better. Anyway, I’ve gotta get to work for the day, but those of you out
there that make Debian happen, perhaps you’ll see a bit of a thank you from
me today. While I’ve thanked you all before, I think that no one does it
enough.