Arch-based Manjaro Linux Will Pursue Full-Time Maintainers, Ramping Up Efforts

[ms178]

i don't know what their reasons have been, but as they are mention partnerships/sponsoring, i could imagine that this is the reason - getting money from a company (legally) is really complicated if you are an e.V. in Germany...

It is not my area of expertise and the devil is in the details, but KDE is organized as an e.V. and I guess they face the same legal challanges in regards to partnerships/sponsoring? The option they chose has certainly its merits and is very common in the commercial space, I just hope they did consult a legal expert and weighted the pros and cons of each option before doing this (as there is also a wirtschaftlicher Verein, gGmbH etc.).

[gorgone]

i don't know what their reasons have been, but as they are mention partnerships/sponsoring, i could imagine that this is the reason - getting money from a company (legally) is really complicated if you are an e.V. in Germany...

the use of a GmbH is the right way because it prevents many problems that KDE in particular has.
it has extremely many disadvantages to be only a registered association (eV) especially tax law it is very complicated.
A GmbH is there substantially easier to account for.

[Termy]

It is not my area of expertise and the devil is in the details, but KDE is organized as an e.V. and I guess they face the same legal challanges in regards to partnerships/sponsoring? The option they chose has certainly its merits and is very common in the commercial space, I just hope they did consult a legal expert and weighted the pros and cons of each option before doing this (as there is also a wirtschaftlicher Verein, gGmbH etc.).

KDE has had enough issues with exactly this afaik.
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/commenta...ment/102110/52 confirms my suspicion that this is the main reason.

[Vistaus]

distri is an experimental distribution at this stage.

Michael should cover that on the front page

[ms178]

the use of a GmbH is the right way because it prevents many problems that KDE in particular has.
it has extremely many disadvantages to be only a registered association (eV) especially tax law it is very complicated.
A GmbH is there substantially easier to account for.

This is just true under certain circumstances. e.g. if you are thriving to get accredited as a charitable organization ("Gemeinnützigkeit") with your registered association to enjoy certain financial benefits (§ 52 Abgabenordnung). If you are not, there are way less restrictions, e.g. many soccer clubs are still registered associations and do a lot of economic activities in the millions nowadays.

Don't get me wrong, their move makes sense if they want to setup a more professional distribution and want to compete with the likes of Ubuntu, Suse and Redhat. It just gives me the impression of moving away from their roots as a community organized hobby project to a commercial entity. But that is not what they are communicating.

[muncrief]

Yay! I know Manjaro isn't perfect, but it's the best distro I've found in years. It's been consistently up to date, with minimal breakage. And that's what us oldsters need!

[Templar82]

I really like some on Manjaro's tools, like their hardware detections and kernel manager. It will good to see where the project goes with some full time maintainers.