Transparency, donations, and elementary OS

A very public spat between the founder of the elementary OS Linux distribution and one of the board members for Software in the Public Interest (SPI) in early February got kind of ugly. As with any dispute of this nature, there were various claims and counter-claims that make it difficult to determine all of what transpired. But, based on what can be discerned, there are some wider issues to consider.

The public part of the disagreement began when elementary OS founder Daniel Foré posted on Google+ about a telephone conversation he had with Joshua Drake, who is a member of SPI's board. Foré felt that he got a "really aggressive sales call" from Drake about having elementary OS join SPI. Foré suggested that Drake wanted the project to join so that SPI could get a cut of the money that the distribution brings in. As noted in an LWN review of the first elementary OS "Freya" beta back in August, the distribution strongly encourages $10 contributions for downloading. SPI does take a 5% cut of donations for member projects for its services.

Foré obviously did not like the perceived pressure to join SPI. He pointed out that the distribution already has a legal entity behind it, but that Drake was adamant that elementary OS needed to be associated with a non-profit. Foré went on to note that because he was not interested in joining, Drake planned a "blog about how poor your product is". He concluded by saying that what Drake was doing amounted to extortion.

For his part, Drake did post on his blog about elementary OS, though that post has since been taken down. It can still be found, however, but it doesn't come off quite the way Foré predicted. Drake does criticize the project for its web presentation, in particular he was concerned that site visitors get no indication of the for-profit structure of the limited liability corporation (LLC) behind elementary OS. While Drake was certainly critical of the project/company, it's hard to say to say that he went completely overboard.

But elementary OS press lead Cassidy James Blaede was not at all happy with Drake's post. He rebutted each of the main points Drake made, though, of course, it largely boils down to a difference of opinion. Elementary OS is not shy about asking downloaders for money, but there is not much information on the web site about the corporate structure or its for-profit nature. Essentially, that is most of what Drake was complaining about in his original post. In a replacement post that was clearly intended to tamp down the flames, Drake reiterated that more concisely.

As is often the case in these kinds of conflicts, though, the toothpaste is pretty hard to get back into the tube once it gets out. Drake's original blog post, coupled with Foré's and Blaede's Google+ postings (and the inevitable comment stream accompanying them), quickly spread to reddit and Phoronix. A post from Alberto Ruiz calling SPI "despicable" probably helped fan the flames.

But, at its heart, the dispute is about transparency. Drake may have made a ham-handed approach to Foré—at best he was misunderstood, at worst he was well out-of-bounds—and his withdrawn blog post was fairly confrontational, but what he was after was not completely unreasonable. The elementary OS web site is still not clear about where donations to the project go, or that it is a for-profit organization.

There is also the question of where the money that is donated actually goes. Blaede mentioned "servers, merch to resell, and occasionally conference/travel costs and development hardware" as expenses for the project. Elsewhere, the bounties offered at Bountysource have been noted as another project expense. All of that seems perfectly reasonable, but the project/company could be more open about how it spends its money, especially when it is more aggressive than most open-source projects in soliciting donations.

Just prior to Drake and Foré's telephone conversation—presumably part of what sparked it—elementary OS had gotten a lot of flak for its posting (since revised, original here) that downloaders who choose to not pay are "pretty much cheating the system". Those words were poorly chosen, though the project clearly does feel that users should pay for its work. The revised text now reads: "We want users to understand that paying for software is important and not paying for it is an active choice." That is, at least, a less antagonistic way to put it.

There are other revisions to that post, mostly toning down some of the rhetoric, but elementary OS does have a bit of a point. While the distribution is based on Ubuntu (which is based on Debian, of course) and builds atop all of the work those projects do, elementary OS does add value that some find useful and/or compelling from a design standpoint. Traditionally, open-source projects have been fairly passive about donations, but elementary OS appears to be bucking that tradition. So far, that has led to a lot of noise in various locations, but is it really so wrong for a project to try to get enough revenue to fund its activities?

Many of the criticisms about the distribution's funding stance are that it hasn't done "enough" to deserve the level of donations it is seeking. That may well be true, but there is nothing inherently wrong with trying. There are lots of projects that are struggling due to lack of funding, along with various efforts to find funding for them (including organizations like Snowdrift.coop that we covered back in December). One could argue that elementary OS is just trying a different approach. It remains to be seen whether it will be successful or not.

On the transparency side, elementary OS could certainly do more to make it clear that it is a for-profit entity. It is not obliged to share its finances—it is far from the only company in our community with closely held financial information—but doing so might help with donations. In the final analysis, it is a company trying to find its way in the (crowded) Linux distribution space; if it isn't doing "enough" to attract funding to keep it going, perhaps it will transform into something more like what its critics would like to see. Or it may die on the vine. But its code is free, which is pretty hard to criticize.