This sounds a lot more like an attempt to bring WilberWorks
Wilber what? I plead ignorant.
back to
life than what I was imaging from such a foundation. IMO it should be
a lot less commercially oriented but maybe I am only getting a wrong
impression from looking at this list. I don't think a GIMP foundation
should share any interests with companies like for example MacGIMP.
IMO a foundation should not sell anything. It should serve as a
representant of the GIMP developers and it may accept donations
(actually that's one of the major points).
And donations would be one of its major points. However having a reliable source of money, like manual and chachka sales can only help TGF be more helpful. Basically, _anything_ TGF does will cost money. The more money it has, the more helpful things it can do.
The FSF foundation, for example, collects membership dues (which are tax deductable donations) and sells tshirts, pins, stickers, posters, manuals, cds, has a corporate patronage program, in addition to seeking out private donations. The gnome foundation at least has tshirts, coffee mugs and the like that it gives to big donators, and is making some kind of noise about setting up a store. The mozilla foundation doesn't have these things, but I am willing to bet that they will in the future.
Essentially, I can't run this thing forever, for free. There needs to be some way of making enough money to reliably pay for things like filing fees. Besides, people are more willing to donate money if we can give them something for the donation.
As for being a representative of the GIMP developers, I think this should be TGF's primary responsibility. However, doing that also costs money. There are phone bills, mailing costs, travel costs, gas costs, my accounting is _almost_ free but will still cost something (and accounting is important to keep our tax-exempt status).
It should also help to create contacts between the GIMP community and people that seek for advice or need speakers. But IMHO there should be no t-shirts, no printed manuals, no CDs and most importanyly no ads. If someone wants to do this kind of stuff, feel free to found a company and try your luck.
Yes. I hope I haven't mislead people into thinking I am trying to start some kind of commerical venture.
Believe me, I am not. However, I am trying to think of as many ways as possible to be as helpful as possible to the gimp community. All of these things require money. Paying for things like the next GimpCon, and making presentations happen are some of the best ways I can come up with to help the Gimp Community. I want to do these things. If I am doing these things, then I feel TGF is being successful. However to be able to do these things we need money. The more money we have, the more successful I feel running TGF.
As far as printed manuals go, I think they are important. I really like printed documentation (it is waay better than online documentation) and I think printed manuals go a long ways toward encouraging people to use (and thus donate to!) the gimp. Binary packages are in this same vein, but, I think, less important, since distros (and Tor) will prepare packages for us.
-- Dan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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