[9fans] Plan 9 future

[Lucio De Re lucio@proxima.alt.za]

Excuse the ramblings below, it is hard to formulate these things
properly so early in the morning.  And I'm quite excited, to boot :-)

On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 11:19:20PM +0000, G. David Butler wrote:
>
> So, I would like to propose the idea of _The Plan 9 Club_.
>
> A member of the Club would have the following benefits:
>
Count me in.

> Access to the source (even the shrinkwrap license allows this).
> (Remember, only Lucent has source distribution rights.)
>
> Access to repositories of bug fixes and enhancements coordinated
> by the Club.  (It is important to have these separate as the Club
> would have an obligation to return bug fixes to Lucent, but not
> enhancements.)
>
> Access to documentation, training and support.
>
> Access to commercial use sublicenses.
>
I wonder if drawing a line at this point would not give us additional
scope.  Membership up to, but not including this point would be,
tentatively, implicit in being on a mailing list, whereas this
access may require a subscription fee.  Just a suggestion, I'm not
sure how practical it may be.  Access to the source would have to
include some official acceptance of the shrink-wrap licence, as
you mentioned below.

I guess the mailing list may have to be restricted, with no gatewaying
to NetNews, and I would prefer not to have such a restriction.
>
> To become a member you would have to agree to the terms of the
> associated licenses and pay (hopefully trivial) dues either yearly
> or monthly.  Dues would fund the repostories and the support
> elements of the Club.  Sublicenses would involve additional fees.
>
Perfectly natural, I approve of fees as indication of intent, as
a CVS-like repository would be pretty inexpensive to run.

>
> Now, here are some questions for us all:
>
> How should the Club be governed?
>
A board of trustees.  It's the only mechanism I have come across
that eliminates vested interests :-)  But it is only a semi-serious
suggestion, it may be too complex for the purpose.

> Would members be compensated for their code contributions?  How?
>
Too difficult to do by default.  Members may ask for compensation
and refrain from providing the contribution, so it would be desirable
to have some funds for such, but once it's paid for, a contribution
would have to be generally available (no licence or copyright
issues, without preventing legitimate intellectual property protection
where the contributor feels a need - an expiry date would be nice,
but may be too complex yet again).

> Should the club allow resellers?  What would happen to a commercial
> sublicense if the owner of the sublicense is not a member?
>
Hm.  That's a valid reservation.  Is it practical to prevent reselling?
Can reselling be redirected to the Club?  Is this not too onerous and
prone to breaches?

> Should there be different classes of membership?
>
I don't like this, although oragnisations and individuals have
different means for contributions.  For ISOC-ZA (the South African
Chapter of the Internet Society) I, as membership official, am
about to propose that we drop organisational/corporate memberships
and call strictly for corporate sponsorship.  The sponsorship may
well include a number of individual memberships.  I'm happy to
discuss this here, if it helps, and I'd likely take any good
suggestions back to ISOC-ZA too.

> How would members share in the ownership of the Club?!!!
>
That can wait until our IPO, right?!  :-)  :-)  :-)
>
> Long Live Plan 9!
>
Oh, I bet it will!!  Thanks, David, you have done well beyond the
call of duty in this, no matter what your claimed objectives may be.

++L