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Re: [ox-en] mozilla use of money



hi Per,


I can't speak for everyone, but I find $72m a tiny sum compared to
Microsoft's warchest, which the foundation has to take into account. And
there are lots and lots of worthy causes like OpenSSH around.

i see. well, the comparison is - imo - not very suitable because mozilla makes its money from the time and interest investment of the open source community. imo, this gives the community some right to have a say
how the money that they generate is being spend.

please correct me if i am wrong, but to me it seems that there are a lot of people who do something for mozilla; yet, all the money that is generated goes into the foundation and nothing (or very very little) goes back to the community.

what do people think inhere on this issue?

I think you fail to understand that FOSS has never been about democracy,
it has always been a meritocracy with a touch of consensus building, for
good and for bad. Most of the time I think it is a good thing.

ok i understand that now. im sure when you write a software program some kind of dictatorship/meritocracy is necessary to ensure that the program is efficient. but regarding the long term steering of a community and the goal of promoting open source vs proprietary software (i think this is something most people inhere would agree with), i dont think inclusion of multiple interests is a bad thing.

In this
case, I would not want a say in how the Mozilla Foundation spends its
funds, simply because I trust them to know a lot better how to utilize it
(for the best of my interests and the good of mankind etc) than I do.

why do you trust the mozilla foundation? it has been set up by aol. on basis of which actions do you trust them? when i look
at the actions of the foundation, i cant help but distrusting them.

just imagine what a "blockbuster application" generating millions each year like the browser could do for the whole os community... again, at least to me as outsider it seems that mozilla is a project that lives from thousands of people who do some work (though 40 people are hired from mozilla).

yes, distribution of money is difficult. but if the decision is made by an indepdent committee and allocation is, this might take most of the distribution issues.


Democracy is not always the right solution. It is a tough process to
administrate with lots of overhead costs. It is also not necessary when
you are free (in both senses of the word) to fork at will.


what is the essence of democracy? to me, its about diverese interests participate in one way or another in the steering of the community/instution. while there are drawbacks, history shows that true democracies tend to be very stable over the long run. in this respect, what is the life span of a typical company (which represents only one interest)?

i generally am hesitant when any institution only goes in "one direction"; because in any institution there are multiple interests represented. so any "moral reasons" put aside, there is also a good rational reason for the representation of
multiple interests within a foundation.

markus
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