Manjaro is currently owned by "Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG". One or two (maybe three now) constributors are hired by this company to work on the distro.
Because of this there is essentially two parts to Manjaro. Manjaro the Community and Manjaro the Company. Manjaro the Company has funds from HW deals with Pine, laptop vendors and merch.
Manjaro the Community has community donations through opencollective. These funds are parts of the community funds Phil (founder of Manjaro the Company, and project leader) had collected privately and forwarded to this collective. These funds are used to pay for laptops and merch associated with business expenses to forward the interest of Manjaro the Company.
You can see how this creates some tensions when the boundary between the Community and the Company is blurry at best.
> These funds are parts of the community funds Phil (founder of Manjaro the Company, and project leader) had collected privately and forwarded to this collective
OpenCollective and CommunityBridge/LFX were set up after the surprise company announcement to collect community donations from that point (and intended to protect them as independent). The previous privately-collected donations were never forwarded.
Thanks for this explanation. I've got a few devices happily yay'ing for a couple years now and hadn't realized the background.
I don't mean to dismiss the tension or that jonathon has made an unfair stand, but I am not sure I understand how the schism is warranted. Any software that combines outside funding with donations has a risk of this right? Unless I'm missing something it may just be a personal falling out.
>Any software that combines outside funding with donations has a risk of this right? Unless I'm missing something it may just be a personal falling out.
The problem is the intransparency in the way things where handled as well. This is the most recent event. There are more quarrels with FreeOffice Manjaro originally planned to pre-install for some reason, but later backpedaled after pushback.
Because of this there is essentially two parts to Manjaro. Manjaro the Community and Manjaro the Company. Manjaro the Company has funds from HW deals with Pine, laptop vendors and merch.
Manjaro the Community has community donations through opencollective. These funds are parts of the community funds Phil (founder of Manjaro the Company, and project leader) had collected privately and forwarded to this collective. These funds are used to pay for laptops and merch associated with business expenses to forward the interest of Manjaro the Company.
You can see how this creates some tensions when the boundary between the Community and the Company is blurry at best.
https://opencollective.com/manjaro/
https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/change-of-treasurer-for...