[openbeos] Re: [haiku-development] Re: Haiku Inc's purpose (was: Haiku Inc. and Haiku)
- From: "Urias McCullough" <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 09:27:42 -0700
Moving this to the other mailing list now...
2008/9/2 Jonas Sundstrom <jonas@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> "Urias McCullough" <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 2008/9/2 Jonas Sundstrom <jonas@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> ...
>> > I think I´ve mostly thought of Haiku, Inc as just
>> > being there, doing what it was supposed to do,
>> > without fanfare.
>>
>> If I may ask, what do you believe that Haiku, Inc.
>> does currently?
>
> Maintaining its status as non-profit, filing/holding
> trademarks, receiving/keeping/distributing donations,
> holding some copyright to Haiku source.
Let's dig a little deeper here :)
First, we are struggling to maintain the status as a non-profit - I
dare say this is actually the tricky part due to the legal mire we're
still trying to get out of (maybe I'm making a big deal out of
nothing, but the fact that we haven't fixed it suggests it's the
harder part).
As for receiving/keeping donations - we're definitely doing that. What
we're not necessarily doing well is "distributing donations". The
Haiku Code Drive idea was an excellent initiative, and proved to be
very popular with the community. I think that it should definitely
become a recurring drive each year (assuming the donations are enough
each time). As for other uses of the donations, currently they cover
the admin costs of the website, the domains, the various fees, etc.
that Haiku, Inc. incurs.
It also pays for the occasional hardware purchase for a developer, or
reimbursement for expenses to help promote or develop Haiku (the
recent LinuxWorld exhibit space for example was not free, but we did
get a very good deal).
I think we need to start budgeting the donations, and publishing this
budget so that we can forecast our targets and let the community know
how much is needed, and where it's going. This is something that I
know several have wanted to do, but we need good ideas that actually
work - and planning for events, etc.
>> What should it be doing?
>
> I think those are just fine. Not everything must be
> part of Haiku, inc.
No, not everything, but certainly more IMO. It almost feels as if
Haiku, Inc. has often been treated as a "necessary evil" that the
project needed in order to get some things done - but it really could
be more :)
>> > From the inside point-of-view, how is Haiku, Inc. broken?
> ...
<snip>
>
> :/ I haven´t got a clue how to begin solving that
> without the cooperation of the current board members.
We do still have some contact with M. Phipps, and Tyler as well, so
we're not completely on our own :)
But the fact remains, we need to finish the transition and fix the
other stuff as well.
To be honest, the transition team has been at least active in working
on business relations (like those with ACCESS, etc), maintaining
existing assets (domains, website accounts, store, paypal, etc.), and
of course, promoting Haiku (SCaLE, LinuxWorld, etc.) - so we've been
busy at least doing various tasks all this time. I suppose one might
say, these were the "not completely boring tasks"... who knows.
Jorge played a pretty major role in many of these areas, big shoes,
which we can only hope to fill. Help is always appreciated.
- Urias
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