why is the SC relevant (was Re: SC issues revised)

[Bo Thorsen]

On Thursday 21 March 2002 01:32, Per Bothner wrote:
> * Another idea is the formal consortium idea, with annual membership
> fees etc.  This is how the X Consortium worked - for a while.  Other
> possible models include W3C, XFree86, Gnome, KDE, and Apache.  I have no
> idea how successful these are at getting corportate sponsorship for
> development projects.  Trying to start up something like that seems
> like a huge undertaking, though we could probably use the FSF as
> an umbrella corporation.  It would probably be easier when the
> economy is better.

I can't speak for the others, but I know about the KDE League (the consortium 
of companies sponsoring KDE). This is a pretty good amount of companies who 
pay an annual fee to the KDE League. The money isn't used for development at 
all. This is for two very good reasons: The sponsoring companies can *never* 
have a saying in the direction of the coding, at least not other than what 
every developer/translator/documentor is able to have. And it would be unfair 
if the League gets to decide who gets paid for KDE work and who doesn't.

The KDE League is about sponsoring publicity and KDE related events. Like the 
debugging week in Nürnberg three weeks ago where 20 developers where put in 
the same room for a week with only bugfixing on their mind.

I think it's a wise choice by the KDE people to not let the League do more 
than this.

Link: www.kdeleague.org

Bo.

-- 

     Bo Thorsen                 |   Praestevejen 4
     Free software developer    |   5290 Marslev
     SuSE Labs                  |   Denmark