On Wed, Jul 10, 2024 at 6:49 PM Christian Boltz <opensuse@cboltz.de> wrote:
Hello,
Am Dienstag, 9. Juli 2024, 12:48:45 MESZ schrieb Patrick Fitzgerald:
The foundation finally came about because of fears re the funding of future community events. There were a lot less events sponsored by SUSE in the last couple of years, and who knows, for whatever reason that may continue.
The foundation exists to allow for the collection of donations, because openSUSE cannot have a bank account, because it is not a legal entity - just a name.
You might say, well SUSE can take the donations themselves; but then most people would think "why am I donating to a company that sells it's software for a profit?" (Hence the naming issue as well - because outsiders do not understand the difference).
Agreed, the foundation makes lots of sense for handling donations.
I remember cases when serious hardware donations didn't happen because SUSE would technically have become the owner back then, even with a contract saying that the hardware has to be used only for openSUSE. And that's just one example.
Therefore, I'm very happy that we finally have a foundation.
However, I doubt that the name "openSUSE" is a problem. I'm sure that people and companies who consider to donate to openSUSE _do_ know and understand the difference between SUSE and openSUSE.
No, they really don't. It is something I've personally had to explain over and over before. And I know that I failed to convince one to donate to the project because they could not be convinced that openSUSE was sufficiently separate from SUSE that it wouldn't be abused for SUSE things. And honestly? It's hard to prove. We have no real way to provide those assurances as it currently stands. -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!