[ubuntu-my] My Comment

[zarul shahrin]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 12:45 PM, CS Lee <geek00l at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm no stranger to OSS and commercial world, and I hope my comment is
> helpful here.
>
> What is community?
> Community is a bunch of people with same objective working together
>
> What is company?
> Company is a bunch of paid people working together
>
> If one want to make money from open source, I have no arguments, this is
> nothing wrong because if you want to make money from open source, you will
> have to pay your time and human resources to get it done(which means you
> have to pay the money to keep it going).
>
> The way company and community giving back to the open source arsenal are
> different.
> Community tends to give back with source code enhancing, documentation
> writing, application testing.
>
> Company tends to pay money to support the event and so forth.
>
> Money is not evil, it draws the motivation sometimes. With financial
> support only you can go on, else it ends up hobbyist and people come and go
> style.
>
> The simple way to do this is following other model, such as mozilla, bsd
> foundation. They earn money from one side, and use that money to pump back
> to the foundation which will support all the related events(say hackathon,
> conference)
>

  Well, Here at least, I personally think many people here confused between
"Ubuntu Community" and "Canonical"

1) Ubuntu community is a "NON-PROFIT" organization
2) Canonical is a company that supports Ubuntu development by pumping money
into it and it makes money by supporting the Ubuntu Distro

In other word in "Ubuntu Malaysia" we don't do things for $$$. It's against
the spirit and it's against the Community policy itself. I think I have been
posting link regarding it before, especially on IRC that none of the Ubuntu
community should really have profit as its motive. This is not a "rule" that
I invented myself. It's a rule that's already there. I think this is pretty
much a standard rule, a non-profit organization is meant to be non-profit.
We don't claim to be non-profit and make money from it.

Canonical is a "company" they supports their customers with services and
"commercial products" (drivers etc..) Canonical doesn't operate under Ubuntu
Community,  it operates as a "company" by itself and then fund the Ubuntu
Community.

So what is my problem here? My problem is when you want to use this
community to make money... You want to do business under the label of
"ubuntu community" this is wrong. So wrong, it's even against the Ubuntu
Community policy and the law of many countries. If you setup a company, that
"supports" Ubuntu Distro, then I have no problem, in fact I have no right to
say anything about your business and many people have been doing that here
in Malaysia. But, if you're planning to use this community as a frontier for
your business, then I have to say a big "NO".  This is a "NON-PROFIT"
organization. You don't make profit from it or use it as a platform to
promote your businesses. This is not my rule. It's part of the community
rules.

My problem here is when people are turning this community into a company. In
other words using it as a frontier to their businesses, This is wrong and
please refer to the Ubuntu Policy. If they really have any real interest on
the community they should bother to read them and already know about it.





> And another correction here is M$ has their plan, they gave msdos for free
> and later released windows for the addicts, that leads to monopoly soon
> enough.
>
>
I am not sure about this, but as far as I read in his autobiography, DOS was
bought from SCP and  then it was sold to IBM. Microsoft didn't develop DOS
by themselves and the only reason why Microsoft has anything to do it is
because IBM approached Bill Gates and told him that they need an OS for
their new microcomputer. To make things short, MSDOS and Windows were meant
to be a commercial product since day 1, even before the DOS was bought by
Microsoft, it's already a commercial product..

The other thing is, Microsoft is a company since day 1, and even if a
company gives something for free in the beginning, we shouldn't be suprised
if it becomes a commercial product later. It's a product of a "company".

Here, it's a different story, Ubuntu is a "NON-PROFIT" organization since
day 1, that didn't change and will not change. We don't commecialize a
product develop by a community of a non-profit organization as we like.
That's why we have so many type of different licenses.


Zarul

>
> Mark Shuttle is not stupid, he knows what he is doing. And the truth is
>
> No one will do something for nothing, that collides with the human nature.
>
> If you have no intention, you live with nothing .....
>
>
> The end.
>



>
> --
> Best Regards,
>
> CS Lee<geek00L[at]gmail.com>
>
> http://geek00l.blogspot.com
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