Re: [ros-dev] ReactOS Foundation 501c3 Status - Approved

[Steven Edwards]

Hi James,

--- James Tabor [e-mail] wrote:
> Paying developers? Hum?
>
> I don't want to be the bad guy here, but this could push people away from the project. It would
> be
> like going back to five years ago when ROS had no GUI just a command console. Everyone will wait
> for five or so developers to fix things, and trust me it does happen that way in the real world.
> The back log will kick their asses.

See the other thread. I don't think paying developers as full time workers is a good idea. I think
Contracts or bounties on certain projects are.
> Now I have to ask, where does the money come from? If the ORG has no money, I guess it should 
> produce a competing distribution CD. This could make M$ happy, so M$ would have a target to
> sue at. Also everyone on the board would become a target as well.

I was wrong in the other email. I forgot we have $25 in the general fund atm which was raised at
LinuxWorld. I expect we can make quite a bit selling CDs, T-Shirts, Etc, if we want as well as
just accepting donations. As for the fear of lawsuit, the idea behind the foundation was that it
was better the foundation get sued and try to have some cash for legal defence rather than some
poor developer in school. Everybody here knows the risk from Microsoft....

Thanks
Steven

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[ea]

Hi Steven,

first of all, thank you for all the time you spent on the Foundation thing.
> See the other thread. I don't think paying developers as full time workers is a good idea. I think
> Contracts or bounties on certain projects are.

I agree.
> I was wrong in the other email. I forgot we have $25 in the general fund atm which was raised at
> LinuxWorld. I expect we can make quite a bit selling CDs, T-Shirts, Etc, if we want as well as
> just accepting donations. As for the fear of lawsuit, the idea behind the foundation was that it
> was better the foundation get sued and try to have some cash for legal defence rather than some
> poor developer in school. Everybody here knows the risk from Microsoft....

This is and has always been a big issue (or big fear?): how is this 
handled on the Wine side? The only rational reason for a lawsuit is 
Microsft suspects ROS has some stolen code in it that belongs to them 
(see SCO versus Linux). We must therefore be sure our code is clean. 
There could be some funds for paying a code analysis performed by a 
third party (of course we can not ask a MS coder nor a ROS coder to look 
at their code and at ours and say if they differ).

Regards,
Emanuele