[IMC-US-tech] Re: [IMC-US] My Disappeared Proposal

[Sascha Meinrath]

hi all,

> faith sez:
> > as a fledgling company, Acorn is pursuing projects that mirror the
> > ideals and visions of the people involved. everyone in the
> > collective is active in the UCIMC, in many different arenas and
> > capacities.
>
> I must echo tribal scandal's sentiment: if all these people are involved
> in UCIMC, why do they want to promote their cooperative instead of helping
> indymedia for no reward like the rest of us do? Josh and max have both
> echoed this sentiment as well, yet I have still seen no response from
> the Acorn people about this...

the folks working with Acorn are already doing a lot of volunteer work for
Indymedia and continue to do a lot of work for Indymedia.  many of us work
10-20 hours a week directly on Indymedia projects, at least a couple Acorn
Active Media folks volunteer closer to 30 hours/week.  this is a
collective entirely composed of dedicated Indymedia activists.  but we
still have to find a way to pay our rent -- which is the idea behind
forming an affinity group and then incorporating the collective.  as a
group, our volunteer time is fairly much maxed out; what Acorn was asking
for was acknowledgement for taking time, as a collective, to do the IMC-US
site.

Indymedia has never had a problem linking to projects that have helped get
our websites up and running -- whether to Dada, Mir, SF Active, Linefeed,
IMC Geeks, etc. etc. etc. -- it's standard practice on a vast majority of
IMC websites.  no one at Acorn had any idea that our offer would be viewed
so negatively by the IMC-US group given the good faith offer that Acorn
was making.

> > I do, however, have one big caveat, which I believe is much more
> > important than the size of the acknowledgment on the website. I would
> > like a guarantee that the software developed for the US IMC site is
> > released under a public license such as the GPL. That way the software
> > can be used and developed in a completely open manner consistent with
> > Indymedia goals and policies.
>
> Ryan's caveat is important, and again, I still haven't seen a response
> from Acorn about this. I'm afraid I fail to see the benefit to us of
> agreeing to this link for the rest of time if the software isn't available
> to us to hack on, use, modify, develop, redistribute, etc.
>
> Can someone clarify these two important issues so we can get the ball
> rolling again?

Acorn is completely committed to open source -- of course whatever we
developed for Indymedia use would be open source.

--sascha