[fpc-pascal] FPC/Lazarus foundation: The developer's answer.

Michael Van Canneyt michael at freepascal.org
Sun Apr 30 10:11:48 CEST 2006


Hello,

For the people on the fpc-pascal mailing list that are not subscribed on the
Lazarus mailing list, the following mail is a response to the request of
some Lazarus users to start some kind of FPC/Lazarus foundation, to advance
the use of FPC/Lazarus, and to aid in development. I am sending this mail
to both lists, in order to reach a bigger audience.

This mail is intended as a response from the FPC developer team.
I'm pretty sure the Lazarus team has a similar attitude.

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All the discussion about a Lazarus/FPC foundation can be solved very simple:

Just start one. There is no need for the foundation to be owned or started
by the FPC/Lazarus development groups.

You, the users, can start a Lazarus/FPC foundation if you feel that the development
and support of Lazarus/FPC can be advanced by it.

The Foundation can do mainly 3 things:
1. Support users.
2. Sponsor hardware.
3. Put bids on rent-a-coder (and similar) for developing new things or fixing bugs.
   The resulting code can be inserted in the main tree if devels agree, or distributed
   as separate patches (which I doubt would be necessary).
Such a foundation will not 'own' the code, it will just support use of the code.

After all, it is YOU, the users that will benefit from it. The developers will have
little or no practical benefit from the foundation. Maybe some tasks will be lifted
from their hands, but there will be just as much new tasks. For instance for a
foundation, you are required to do double bookkeeping (at least here in Belgium).
I'm sure none of the devels wants to do that. It's a practical burden.

The FPC developers do what they do because they like developing FPC,
and are not interested in the administrative and organisational
burdens that come with managing a foundation (such as bookkeeping).
They will therefore not start or run such a thing, and so they leave the
decision to start and the actual running of such a foundation up to
the users of FPC/Lazarus (i.e. all of you).

Speaking for myself:
If you start a foundation, I'll be glad to be a 'member of the board' or whatever
it's called, and act as a liaison between the foundation and the developers.
I can coordinate mails if it's needed, and set up email addresses or lists,
webspace or whatever, if you feel this could help to start such a thing.

The ball is in your camp...

Michael.





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