Acknowledging Great Free Software

banuaba writes: "I am a Windows user. I've tried a couple of distros of Linux, and a BSD or two, but they aren't what I need in an OS. Sometimes in my job and my personal 'life' I need something with a little more power than Windows can give me, and when that time comes, I use Cygwin and have been wholly satisfied and enamored with the product they put out. My question for all you Slashdotters out there is this: I would like to 'reward' the Cygwin people for giving me a great product that fits my needs, but aside from an 'attaboy' email, I don't see how I could compensate them, preferrably financially. I don't have any coding skills of significance, and am not inclined to learn, I'd just like a way to let them know that I like what they've done. In the non-free (as in beer) software world, I would buy their next release. Is there any way to financially help them along? Should I just mail them a check? Would that be insulting to OSS developers, as a general rule? How or would you slashdotters who work on GPL'd code like to be compensated for your time and effort?"

The GNU Project maintains the Cygwin documentation; they have a whole page of ways you can help their efforts to spread Free software, which includes sending money, but quite a few other things, too.

I like Alan Cox's system of CD donations, but I've not met any developers yet who would be offended by a donation in money, bug-fixes, hardware, or positive word of mouth. Does anyone have interesting suggestions for thanking Free software developers?

Walk a Mile

[Nater]

Try to imagine yourself as that developer. You've written some software, either because you needed it for something and it didn't exist, or you thought it would be cool to do, or you were just bored and anxious to write *anything*. You're not interested in selling it for a variety of reasons. Maybe it's because it's only a hobby for you, maybe it's because you have philosophical issues with selling software, maybe it's this, that, or another thing... whatever. At any rate, you wrote, you gave it away, and now you get lots of people writing you bug reports of varying degrees of helpfullness, people sending you patches that sometimes fix things or add features, and sometimes just waste your time, and there have been more than a few people who said they'd take care of something, like creating RPMs and debs on an ongoing basis and then failed to do it, and occassionally someone who has nothing better to say than, "This sucks, it doesn't work. You're the guy who wrote it, so you must suck, too."

What could you possibly receive from a pleased user that would make you ignore all of the bad parts and think, "I'm gonna keep this thing going"?

Send that.

Offended by money?

[Erasei]

Having developed a bit of free software, I don't think any of us would be offended by money. However, if you expected to be treated specially for your contribution, then I might be offended. But if was purely a contribution without asking for special treatment, then by all means, send it along.

Compensation

[chrylis]

I'm sure that most open-source/Free software developers would find the greatest compliment in knowing that people out there use and even rely on their software--but I would think that a donation for what you think the software's worth to the sponsoring organization wouldn't be out of order.

Re:Cygwin is Owned by Red Hat, Right?

[Kristopher Johnson]

If you do buy something and/or send money, make sure you also send a message indicating that cygwin is the thing you like. Otherwise, they might think that you are rewarding them for developing RPM or their work with GNOME.

OSS programmers != superheroes

[psychalgia]

theyll take your money, chances are they are hungry. Mail em a check, if you think theyll be mad, make it anonymous, but I doubt they'll decline. Hell, fed ex em a case of beer, thatll thrill em ;)

Re:You Mean, You Just Ask Them?

[utunga]

I completely agree.

As an example of the sort of difference this can make, consider the case of Steve Outtrim and Sausage Software. I used to work for Sausage Software back in 1996

Sausage's main product was shareware. (I know I know, but just for the sake of argument, consider this case.)

The thing was - instead of saying 'please send a cheque or money order to foo' it said, 'unlock this product by buying a key at our online store'. At that stage online credit card processing was not all that common (1995).

But doing that was, I believe, the main difference between Steve being just another VB shareware developer and his becoming a multi-millionaire. Quite literally, this guy was worth 90 million dollars last time i saw a newspaper article - this largely through sales of shares in the company whose single major success was a shareware HTML editor (HotDog)

I'm not suggesting that OSS developers are the same as Shareware developers. But I think a lot of people would be suprised by how many people actually use there products out there in the wide world.

So being proactive will probably make a *big* difference.

-- I have I think, I do. Didn't I?

Re:Offended by money?

[SLi]

However, if you expected to be treated specially for your contribution, then I might be offended.

Would you be offended if if money was specifically offered to you for making a certain feature the donor needs? I know I wouldn't. Though if it's as strange as most of the features usually requested by clients, it wouldn't make it into the main code base :-)

A noble solution?

[melquiades]

How about making a donation to the EFF [eff.org] in the developer's or project's name? In light of any number of recent events, that may be one of the best ways to help free software. And I'd be honored by the gesture, with no sense of awkwardness at all, if I were in the developer's place!

Re:Beer is good

[Anonymous Coward]

i know.... seems pretty self-evident to me.

uh, you could buy their product...

[rodentia]

HERE [redhat.com]

Feedback

[Blue Aardvark House]

More than just the "attaboy", get involved in the development process by reporting bugs. This will streamline the development process and make for a better product in future releases.

When the downloads increase, they'll be thanking you.

sourceforge and donations

[wobblie]

I don't see any reason why sourceforge and freshmeat or other sites like it could not handle donations, or rather tips for certain projects.

I know that if it was as simple as putting my credit card # in and selecting a project, and tipping $5, i'd have already done it many times. This could all be very easy.

Re:personally

[wmulvihillDxR]

I have to agree with this. Especially for small projects that don't have the fame that other projects have. I'd say, if the project is small, (*blatant plug to my project below*) then they would just like to know if people actually *using* their program. Spreading the word helps these projects. But if a project is already well-established, like Cygwin, money will probably ensure that the project continues. I say this because if a project is as big as cygwin, the developer has probably heard all the praise in the world, might be forced to support the project full-time thus cutting into their "regular" job, and isn't normally paid for the project.

Money would mean a lot to both kinds of projects, but would probably be more appropriate for a larger project. Praise and telling-your-friends-about-project-x is good for smaller projects. However, if you can code (which I know the author of the article can't), that is the biggest contribution to any project.

Documentation

[gouldtj]

I think that a great way for a non-coder to help with an open-source project is to provide documentation. Heaven knows that most projects need this pretty badly. I think these are the best to write 'new user' documentation anyway. Stuff with screen shots rocks :)

PS - Use the FDL

I'm sure they'd accept cheques

[SirSlud]

I release all the music I write for free. However, if you like it enough to send me a cheque, I certainly wouldn't be insulted, or complain. :) I'm sure the same principle applies to many open source developers. Often, things like web hosting, or simply the cost of a computer upgrade doesn't justify charging for software, but if one philathropist out there feels like throwing some money a developers' way, I don't see many developers rejecting the money?

Re:Documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, but to write good documentation you have to be a good programmer and have a very intimate and detailed knowledge about the software you try to write documentation for . Just don't think that documentation for "dummies" can be written by "dummies". That's a trap. And we don't need more, we need less, but better and always newly updated documentation.

Re:Free Software is a philosophy methinks..

[georgewilliamherbert]

It seems to me that Free Software according to the FSF is a philosophy. To feel guilty about using free software and to think that whoever wrote it somehow deserves a reward seems to me to be contrary to the reason they wrote the sotware to begin with. Using it and contributing to it if you can is one thing, but feeling like you owe them money is another altogether.

I think you're confusing "freely redistributable" with "free of charge".

Open Software's objective is to make computer related intellectual property common property as much as possible. That is a good thing. It's not a stated objective to have people always starving, or even going unrewarded for their work.

Some of the forms of those rewards are public accolades, some of them the companies that (still) make money doing Open Source software hiring people, but there's nothing wrong with donations to programmers in general. Some might not want it, but that doesn't mean none of them do.

Money isn't the issue

[DarkRyder]

Most OSS programmers aren't writing software with the specific intention of not being paid for it :) The idea is that people shouldn't be forced to pay for software, not that they shouldn'y be allowed to. The worst response I can imagine is getting a message from them saying that they "don't accept cash" and have torn up your check :)

And money isn't the only way to thank someone; a grateful user once had a couple cases of Dew delivered to me, and I was thrilled (though in general it might be best yo avoid gifts like caffeine or programming tools, as it might be interpreted as "thanks for the software, now work harder!"). If you're unsure what to get for your favorite coder/group, write them! Even if they won't accept anything in return, just knowing that you'd like to will give them a sense of accomplishment about their work (making your software free-as-in-beer isn't as meaningful if it's not something people would pay for :)

Always remember that "just an email" is never just an email. OSS developers have dedicated an often-significant portion of their lives to producing something they know they may never be appreciated for. It's nice to know when people do appreciate it.

Simple proposal

[Alex Belits]

While financial rewards and praise are all great, there is one thing that every open source developer would be happy to accept from you:

STOP USING WINDOWS.

Zealotry aside, the fact that you and a lot of other people use Windows, helps the people who constantly damage what we make and love, so by refusing to support them even if it is 3% more convenient for you than, say, Linux or *BSD, you help to hurt us, and there isn't much else that can compensate this. Next time when some hideous API will create horrible incompatibilities with our software, when part of format will get patented, or when frivolous lawsuit will be brought against some of us, we won't think about praise or money we got from you, we will just think that by using Windows you have added to their dominance and paved the road that they are marching on. It's not like we hate you personally for that, but we would appreciate if you will refuse to help our enemies.

Re:uh, you could buy their product...

[leifw]

Gosh, at a starting contribution level of $12,500, I think I, were I in the original poster's shoes, just go for a check to charity.