To Whom Should I Donate? 299
jasonmanley writes "I currently use DesktopBSD. The other day I gave some thought to donating money to the project, but then I got to thinking — to whom would I donate the money? DesktopBSD benefits from FreeBSD and KDE among other projects. What about software with a smaller focus, such as OpenSSH? In fact, there are heaps of other projects' software embedded in FOSS packages, and I would like to know who the community thinks should get the donations."
Cowboyneal (Score:5, Funny)
Making things complicated. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Making things complicated. (Score:5, Funny)
There is a 1 in 20 jillion chance of them making significant improvements to their operating system, software, and business practices resulting in a decent, problem free [or much reduced] computing system.
The odds of this happening are excruciatingly small, just like a lottery. The different thing about it is, if you 'hit', it greatly improves the computing experience of most of the computing world [so it's like everyone wins].
This post can be modded: flamebait, insightful, dopey, idiotic, and/or funny. Any other modding is expressly forbidden.
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Re:Making things complicated. (Score:5, Funny)
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- 'hit' it?
Plus maybe the dentist one. I'm not sure.
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However, when everything is free - this really doesn't work in the same sense. So I guess the option is donating or buying products from an open source company (like red hat). Another option would be instead of just donating - pay someone (possibly through a bounty system) to fix a bug or add a feature to some program.
Then again, there are some pretty cool projects
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For the OP, I would take a look at a couple of factors:
1) which piece affects you the most?
2) which project is the poorest?
Personally, I prefer to donate to OpenBSD because
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Easy answer! (Score:5, Funny)
I'll make that complicated decision for you...honest!
Re:Easy answer! (Score:5, Funny)
That's what Bill Gates was thinking when he came out with Windows Me.
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Actually... yeah.
Yep. Works for me.
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just choose your favorite project (Score:4, Interesting)
sometimes our time is as good as some cash.
Re:just choose your favorite project (Score:5, Insightful)
sometimes our time is as good as some cash.
this may come as a suprise ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Shocking I know.
And he _did_ say "donate" and not "donate money".
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Not my time. I'm stupid, and me spending time helping only means more of other people's time fixing my mistakes. Oh, no, my money is much more useful to others.
Some options (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have some rad coding skillz and some time, i'm sure the projects would also love to see bug reports with patches.
Do you use any of the software to work/as part of your job? if so, the software that you use for that is a great candidate for a project to donate to.
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I donate regularly to vim and groklaw.
The short answer is, donate to whoever you like.
Re:Some options (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some options (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, that depends on your own vision of things. One of the most useful software packages I found in the last 8 years (is it really already that long) was OpenBSD. At first I bought their CDs and T-Shirts occasionally. Then I started buying their CD on the 6 month release shedule and I just rounded it up to the next 100€ (back then CDs were 30€ or so) donating the difference. Now I even stopped doing that: I just have a monthly standing order to their account. I still buy the CDs occasionally, but it's not the rule anymore.
Why OpenBSD? Because I like the system (not on the desktop, but as a server it's nice). They created OpenSSH which benefits pretty much every Unix out there. Their security fixes propagate to other platforms and software.
So, no, "useful" is what you define it to be. I find OpenBSD useful because it's there, in the background, routing my packets, protecting my computers. I find that insanely more useful and important that anything else. (Note, that this has never stopped me from donating to other projects, including OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, OpenWebmail, and many others...)
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That is why I always run X and KDE without a kernel. What the hell do I need one for? It's of no use of all to me.
Here, let me fix your statement for you:
"Taking this approach, people who are not very smart, or are ignorant, would almost a
To the Digital Standards Organization (Score:5, Interesting)
Coincidentally, on the day we signed the Hague Declaration [digistan.org], Microsoft announced they would support ODF in Office.
Luckily, Digistan does not want your money, just your support. Sign the Hague Declaration online, and help us by getting involved.
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I would donate to the Perl Foundation (Score:4, Interesting)
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People saying "donate your time rather than your money" are very slightly offtopic, because the guy doesn't sound like he would rather support other projects financially than become a developer himself.
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Only to projects that already accept donations (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore I'd advise only to donate to projects that already accept donations, and clearly show that on their homepage. Otherwise your well-meant action might actually stir greed and envy, and thus could be counter-productive.
Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
Send a "thank you" letter to those who do not solicit donations, and tell them why their software is useful to you. It means surprisingly much
Let the flamewars begin... (Score:5, Interesting)
Qt (Score:2, Informative)
I would instead take a look at Troll Techs various products, and keep them in mind if you ever need some of that.
Relevancy ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Now my plug: I've been doing modest tax time donations to the FreeBSD Foundation and the Postgresql project for a couple years now. Because they're modest I can make them a permanen
Re:Relevancy ? (Score:4, Informative)
The little guys (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than donating to a project with corporate backing, why not split your donation up and give it to a few smaller projects instead? You're more likely to make a difference there. Even the tiniest donation could give a lone developer the extra enthusiasm needed to fix that one last bug before calling it a night.
Re:The little guys (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The little guys (Score:5, Funny)
MODS ON CRACK AGAIN - that was funny (Score:2)
Re:The little guys (Score:4, Interesting)
You could always extend that to a more personal approach.
I'm a regular at a local Mexican restaurant. Instead of dropping my loose change anonymously in the tip jar, I show up with a few sixpacks of beer for the staff, and maybe some cut flowers for the hostess. I don't do this on a regular basis, but frequently enough to give everyone a good laugh. Now, my food orders are on the grill as soon as they see me pulling into the parking lot, and I walk out knowing the burritos I ordered were bigger than everyone else's, or my order included things that everyone waiting in line would pay extra for.
Substitute beer with hookers and blackjack (be sure the hookers aren't crossing state lines), airline tickets, gift certificates or whatever else you think may be appropriate, and you might discover those few cents can add up and have a greater effect than you'd think.
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That's so damn right!
While my project wasn't FOSS, it was a browser strat game, keeping it running beyond personal interest for over a year longer was made to happen by the community support, we even almost finished up the next generation version of it (everything polished and updated, lots and lots of new content)
In the end in my case "life came", and i just didn't have the time nor motivation to keep maintaining it. But it did give the community almost a year more time to enjoy the game
As for d
Which ever (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's have a look at the projects mentioned.
DesktopBSD, never heard of them, probably have quite a small user-base compared to FreeBSD.
FreeBSD, benefits more then just your personal desktop OS. Lots of people use it, code flows sideways to other BSD's.
KDE, benefits heaps of people, not just those using BSD based OSs, but also Linux based OSs.
OpenSSH, you would actually be donating to OpenBSD who run the OpenSSH project, but whatever. Again, code will flow sideways to other BSD's, and OpenSSH is used by sooo many people.
Next question, how popular is the project? How many donations do they get?
DesktopBSD, probably doesn't get too many donations, small user base and all that.
FreeBSD would get a bit, KDE would get a lot more (much larger userbase), and OpenBSD would get a bit as well.
So, my suggestion, don't donate to KDE if you only have minimal funds, they probably get lots of cash from other sources.
DesktopBSD might be worth chucking some money at if you like them.
But consider donating to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, even if you don't use them directly. Their code will help you (via DesktopBSD), and will also help other people. They also probably don't get so many donations because of the smaller userbase compared to KDE.
Re:How many people benefit? (Score:5, Informative)
Agree with parent. You could also set aside the money for a few months and see which project actually has issues with funding. If I remember correctly from about 2 years ago, OpenBSD (and OpenSSH) had serious issues with funding at that time: http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/06/03/21/1555243.shtml [slashdot.org] .
Occasionally, a part-time dev may step forward and announce he/she is willing to work full time on the project for a period time, provided people are willing to financially support him/her. Those may be good times to sponsor as well.
Re:How many people benefit? (Score:4, Informative)
> run the OpenSSH project, but whatever.
Actually, you can make a donation specifically to OpenSSH as said on the donation page.
http://openssh.org/donations.html [openssh.org]
Of course most OpenSSH people are also OpenBSD people.
A bit of perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A bit of perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the world could do with quite a bit of wealth redistribution, but I usually think of it as a rather fruitless exercise when any money that goes into certain countries just gets frittered away by a corrupt government rather than actually helping the people in poor conditions. I give 10% of my money to the church because I know that they will spread it amongst many differen
Re:A bit of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
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Software you are talking about is business, or should be business.
I fundamentally disagree with this statement. Business is part of the software ecosystem. But software, including operating systems, can and should be written, distributed and used outside of a business context.
Well, I'd have to disagree with this. Even if something is free (in any meaning), that does not means it's not in a business context. Linux and any BSD, which are the only OSs mentioned in here so far, are very much Business (Serious Business, even *rimshot*). At most, they are anti-business, but just negating everything does not actually make all that different (the ol' flip side of the same coin thing). There are some non-business OSs out there, but those are the really obscure hobbyist ones like Menuet.
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The GP's claim of usage outside of a business context doesn't claim that it shouldn't be written distributed, and used in a business context, only that it should be written, distributed, and used outside a business context. These are not mutually exclusive; you are arguing against a claim that he didn't make.
Anyone disagree with my disagreement of the disagreement?
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to all the people talking about other causes (Score:5, Insightful)
So don't be so demagogic
Spread the money out. (Score:4, Insightful)
There Can Only Be One (Score:4, Insightful)
donate (time || money || expertise) here:
http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html [gnu.org]
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Because I don't like their ideals.
I see it as freedom (to the receaver) with the self sacrifice of freedom (to the developer).
The GNU policy is an attempt to "Stick it to the Man!" not really knowing who "The Man" is or what "The Man" does.
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Re:There Can Only Be One (Score:4, Interesting)
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Software and formats should be adopted based on their merits (i.e. be better than the rest and rely mostly on word-of-mouth propaganda) and not throw valuable resources into t
Donations - Not what you think!!! (Score:4, Informative)
The truth is different guys, just from looking at the donations page at KDE.org I would have thought that that they get at-least 30K$ p/m, but the truth is different (300$, in a good month)
We, the USERS, should donate more [kde.org]
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Also, IIRC, KDE is very closely related to SuSE which then again belongs to Novell now. With that kind of background support, they don't seem to be struggling to pay their bandwidth bills, so I tend to stick to smaller projects without corporate backing. I find my money to make more of a difference than it'd make to KDE, Gnome, OpenSuSE or Fedora (and so
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Mostly Hosting / hardware and employing devs, some cash though.
EFF? FSF? ORG? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about your local Internet cyberfreedom group? That means EFF [eff.org] (US), Open Rights Group [openrightsgroup.org] (UK), European Digital Rights Initiative [edri.org], Digital Rights Ireland [digitalrights.ie], Free Software Foundation [fsf.org] or other civil liberties/human rights groups. Just an idea.
I'd say give out lots of small donations. One group worth targeting in your donation are college students - often they are short on cash, and if they are trying to make the decision about whether to spend an hour hunting a bug in some open source code or get a crappy McJob flipping hamburgers, your donation may flip the balance for them. Having good experiences contributing to the free software world in one's formative years may also help a person avoid the temptation of crappy development jobs in the future.
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Me. (Score:5, Funny)
I happen to be one of those unfortunate souls.
Please, give generously.
Me Too! (Score:3, Interesting)
I sit and watch my 42" LCD with a tear in my left eye. With a 50" plasma, both my eyes would be on fire!
Donate much and regularly. Please.
On a serious note: In ten years of OSS programming I've only once received a user donation. It was $25 deposited into my paypal account and it meant a lot to me. Unsolicited donations are a pick-me-up that lasts for days.
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This is a sin! Where is Sally Struthers? We need to make a 1 hour infomercial.
"These developers are suffering, wont you help? call the number on the screen now."
I would donate to... (Score:2, Informative)
OpenSSL (Score:5, Informative)
It won't work if we tell you (Score:5, Interesting)
There are clearly a multitude of metrics by which you can assess the answer to your question.
Humanitarian: language translation / disability assistance software / tor.
Wanting to overthrow the evil empire: wine, firefox.
Wanting better hardware support: kernel developers.
Wanting to thank people: any projects you use/couldn't do without.
Really, it works best to just donate according to your own special favoritism. This way the projects get money in proportion to how much people/need want them. If you just wanted to pick the one project that will contribute the most to humanity, well, I can tell you already it's going to involve feeding hungry children and not improving your boot time.
If you like, you can imagine you are purchasing the software, and donate whatever is the highest price you would have been willing to pay for it (or at least use that to figure out the proportions in which you should divide your money).
Donate to FSFE - fighting swpat, DRM, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget the organisations that defend your right to write software, like FSFE [fsfeurope.org].
And you don't have to be European to like FSFE's work. As well as fighting against software patents at the European level, we have people working at the UN/WIPO/WSIS global level to prevent harm in future treaty (such as TRIPS, which was the basis for the EU proposal to allow software patents).
And we do licence enforcement, campaigning for open standards, campaigning against the criminalisation of the grey areas of copyright law, and we supported SAMBA in their push to make the documentation published by Microsoft usable by free software developers. And more, but if I stop to think, then this post won't appear high enough to be seen :-)
You can donate [fsfeurope.org], or join the Fellowship [fsfe.org].
IEEE Computing (Score:2)
I donate to the projects I use (Score:2)
I typically support the software titles I use regularly. OpenOffice, FireFTP, TrueCrypt...several others. Google and Canonical don't really need the charity but I'd support both organizations in my consulting business...if either of them would return a phone call.
XBMC - it's being ported to Linux! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52 [xbmc.org] for more information on Linux XBMC or check out the Wiki -> http://www.xboxmediacenter.net/wiki/?title=HOW-TO_compile_XBMC_for_Linux_from_source_code [xboxmediacenter.net]
P.S. ffmpeg is a project that MANY others benefit from including XBMC, if they need money they are also a worthy cause.
Donate when you solve a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Time not money (Score:2)
Also the lesson that "xv" should have taught us more than fifteen years ago is that you can have a program that everyone uses in the unix environment and hardly anybody is ever going to pay for it.
The Open Graphics Project (Score:3, Interesting)
www.opengraphics.org [opengraphics.org]
www.openhardwarefoundation.org [openhardwa...dation.org]
What tools do you use most? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hear SCO have fallen on hard times (Score:3, Funny)
I donate to as many as I can (Score:2)
Tax Deductible Gifts(USA) (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_in_the_Public_Interest [wikipedia.org]
odd (Score:2)
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I'm not so sure. Consensus around here seems to be that Vista is a disaster, after all.
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> print hello+comma+space+world
This is performance killer. You should instead write:
print "%s%s%s%s" % (hello, comma, space, world)
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Layne
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