FreeDevelopers will be owned by the GPL developers of the world as a constituency-based company
FreeDevelopers is the result of a triangulation of 3 of the most successful constituency-based organizations:
NASD (community) and NASDAQ (marketer)
Banks (community) and Visa (marketer)
Citizens and democratic government
approximately 0.8% of FreeDevelopers per month will be released from the trust to participating developers of the world; participating developers will receive monthly ownership interests from the first month they officially join. Therefore, the sooner they join, the larger will be their individual share of the company. FreeDevelopers is based on the proposition: if the code is GPL'd then the developers have the power and are free. GPL software development is most efficient because developer time is used to advance technology by utilizing the scientific method of peer review, not to re-invent the wheel. FreeDevelopers can include all 4 million software developers of the world and grow as the community of developers further increases. The more that join, the more powerful it becomes, and the more valuable is the company. The development arm will be a free-market-in-a-company. It will be a de-centralized meritocracy, with independent, free GPL software projects, competing and cooperating to produce the world's greatest software. This continues the current community-based development methodologies, which do not have traditional hierarchical mechanisms. FreeDevelopers will pay the developers to work on free software projects, lead by current and future GPL project leaders; all GPL projects are an integral part of FreeDevelopers. FreeDevelopers creates a fairer distribution of wealth, because the capitalization of any software company is really only the discounted future value of the work of its developers. For example, arguably the former $500 billion market cap of Microsoft belonged to the 13,000 software developers who created the wealth by creating the software, since unlike traditional industrial companies, there are no real assets that participate in wealth formation. 10-year Trust

The trust is important to give temporal fairness in allowing the whole developer community, of over 4 million developers, to join the company. Ownership interests in FreeDevelopers will be given to developers over 10 years. After 10 years, options can be used for new yearly entrants. Free Software Marketing Company (FSMC)

The Free Software Marketing Company (FSMC) is the majority-owned (51%-95%) marketing arm of FreeDevelopers. The FSMC takes the legal responsibility to guarantee to customers that the software works properly (i.e., provides a warranty) and thereby develops a brand. There needs to be a predominant marketing company for GPL software to compete with proprietary software and to provide salaries to developers. Without such a company, price-cutting would destroy the market for GPL software and then developers could not be paid to work on it.