This is a guest post that was posted to the Not for Profit list by Mr. Summers that I felt should be shown on a wider scale and asked to repost it here so that people who read planet but are not subscribed to the nfp list would see it. As well he stated that he would follow this post and respond to questions and comments.

Greetings,

First, I wish to state that I am a long time Gentoo user and over the past several years I have been nothing but happy with Gentoo. It is my opinion that Gentoo is the greatest of all GNU/Linux distributions, and I want to extend my most hearty gratitude to the entire Gentoo community, to the developers, to the users,to everyone involved, both in the past and in the present, for all of the effort over the years. It has been monumental. Many thanks.

I now own a small development company & we use Gentoo (Hardened-amd64) on our development & production servers. What’s more I happen to deal largely in the non-profit, foundation, and grant world. It is with regard to this particular aspect of my expertise that I wish to inform the various governmental bodies of Gentoo that there is a vast ocean of possibilities, and funding, available to non-profits & foundations. This to perhaps inspire new thinking about the role of Gentoo and the Gentoo community in the world at large.

I am of the opinion that Gentoo should not contract the SFC to manage the Foundation for the following reasons.

-With responsible governance there is no real need to be underthe umbrella of another larger organization. -The SFC may or may not have the funding, capacity, or longevity to handle as large an organization as Gentoo.
-The SFC will surely take some Gentoo generated funding away from Gentoo to cover administrative costs, etc, that, given responsible governence, could be used for the greater benefit of Gentoo and the Gentoo community.

There are significant amounts of money available to NPOs, like Gentoo, from Federal grant programs to the more mundane private charitable donations. In general, these funding opportunities require program development and partnerships with other organizations and institutions such as community based non-profits and universities. The real beauty of these opportunities is that it fosters a relationship between our Gentoo community and the larger public, be it on a smaller local level with other community-based non-profits or on a larger scale with multi university research partnerships, etc. One of the many benefits of this type of interaction is that funding can be allocated for many different activities, for example, provisions for administrative costs, new equipment, training programs, salaries, incentives for developers, and a premium experience for users. Therefore, with this kind of funding, Gentoo can help its own community members while also assisting others. Which, in my opinion, is one of the strongest characteristics of the Gentoo community, helping others. This is demonstrated on IRC, in the forums, and in the email lists every day. Why would we need to belong to a larger organization to do these things? Why do we need an organization, like the SFC, to “manage” Gentoo. Perhaps we ought simply solicit them for /pro bono/ legal assistance in emergency situations.

I am of the opinion that Gentoo should welcome the return of Daniel Robbins, but in a somewhat more limited sense than his recent offer.

Mr. Robbins is obviously an extremely intelligent and dedicated individual that seems to really care about the health of Gentoo. In addition, Mr. Robbins has a large amount of experience in the larger world of business and software development. Thus it seems reasonable to posit that he may indeed have some very good ideas regarding the direction of Gentoo. I, for one, welcome a transparent roadmap that I would have the opportunity to review and comment on. Prior to starting a business I was rather happy to simply remain on the fringe of the Gentoo community. My main interest was in using the meta-distro to accomplish some very specific research related work as well as use on my personal machines. However, now that I rely on Gentoo from a business perspective I find myself much more interested in and concerned about the general direction of Gentoo. Thus, a more transparent governance would put my mind at ease and provide a means for greater communication with Gentoo’s developers.

What follows are some suggestions.

Consider the use of university internship programs for projects like documentation (technical writing students) & The GMN (journalism students). These programs are a requirement to graduate for many university students. With that, many companies and other organizations offer resume-building experience in their field in the form of these unpaid interships. I’m sure many of you have had the pleasure of an unpaid internship. The Gentoo
Foundation can leverage its status as a well known GNU/Linux distribution and a legitimate global organization to attract the leading universities around the world. What I mean to say is that people pay attention to Gentoo and there exists a certain level of expectation of quality from the larger tech world. To really floor the critics, solicit a few English departments at some highly respected university to collaborate with a team of developers and users to create and maintain documentation and write a regular news letter. I know a few good writers and if you give them the right information to start with then answer any questions they have along the way you get really nice work. What writer wouldn’t like to have their name on really well written, and heavily viewed pages? Talk about an attention grabber.

Further, consider using internship programs to assist with the management and governance of the Gentoo Foundation itself. There are many university programs that focus on non-profit and foundation management. Create programs that give opportunities to these students to participate in the day to day business of the Gentoo Foundation. They can act in supporting roles for the trustees and counsel members and other various committees. Hey,
its worth university credit to the student and its free to Gentoo.

Consider the implementation of a Gentoo Patron program, such that companies and other organizations have an opportunity to support the Foundation, be it financially or with volunteers. In return, offer some Patron Profile Page to give the donors some visibility. Further, as a small business owner I have to say, its sometimes very tough to locally procure for employment a good developer, administrator, or otherwise one that knows their way around Gentoo or GNU/Linux for that matter. I imagine that other companies have similar issues. Thus some way for companies and organization to be exposed to the larger Gentoo community would be a significant return on any investment.

Consider a partnership with a larger organization, like Google, to extend the users experience in novel ways. One example would be the use of some social networking tools to aid the Gentoo community in collaborations on code, documentation, etc.

In closing, I want to offer thanks for a job well done. It has taken the dedication of many individuals to get Gentoo to where it is today. This spirit is not gone. Thus, we look toward a bright future. If anyone wishes to contact me for any reason please do so, I would be pleased to answer any questions. If I can provide any futher information or assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Best Regards, Matthew Summers