Re: my annual complaint

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 03:14:16PM -0700, Thomas Lord wrote:

> So, roughly speaking, Google who has received so much advantage from
> the free software movement will contribute back about $50,000 in
> payouts
[...]
> GNU is selling out, when they deal with Google in this manner.
> 
> Perhaps next year, coincident with SoC, and to avoid the penalty of my
> annual complaint (and all the significant weight it carries around
> here :-) the GNU project should announce that it can not, in good
> conscience, accept money from Google under such conditions and that
> therefore, an appeal is made to the general public to make
> contributions directly to a fund administered by the FSF for a
> GNU-specific SoC-like program. 

I don't agree with your negative asessment of the GSoC program on
several grounds; but I do not really have time nor inclination to
discuss this now.

Regardless of that, there are two questions I'm going to ask you. First,
do you really think that the GNU project can realistically gather the
$50000 for a GSoC-like program? (Ignoring the various GNU projects
participating as organisations on their own -- if you want all of these
to go for an alternative program too, the sum required would be more
like $300000 or so...)

Second, do you really think that without the popularity of Google in
general and GSoC in particular, we could find many good student
candidates?

I know that for the Hurd at least, the GSoC project is *extremely*
beneficial, and unless you can propose a realistic alternative, dropping
out is indiscutable.

-antrik-