How Can I Contribute To Open Source? 332
rtobyr writes "I work for a state government agency. That means we can't donate money, because it's a 'gift of public funds.' I had the idea to put up a Web page stating that we 'use the following free software to save tax dollars,' as a way to help spread the word about open source software, but management calls this an 'endorsement.' A mirror server is a no-go as well. I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development. I've donated $10 here and there out of my own pocket, but I'm hoping you Slashdotters have some creative ideas about how my organization could give something back to the teams that create free software we benefit so much from."
Donate (Score:3, Interesting)
For many projects out there $100 would be a lot of money. In many cases project web pages have "Donate" links which work through paypal. So I suggest you list a few OSS products you use. Take a couple of hundred dollars out of petty cash (call it software licensing) and donate it to those projects.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Endorsement or Truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides the good suggestions above, I am curious about this part:
I had the idea to put up a Web page stating that we 'use the following free software to save tax dollars,' as a way to help spread the word about open source software, but management calls this an 'endorsement.'
Technically, if it is true ("you" are selecting free/open source software to save tax dollars, and there is a statement someplace in the govt documents indicating that is part of the reason for the choices made) then endorsement or not, it's public information, and I do not see why stating it, if worded correctly (to properly indicate the reason such choices were made) would run afoul of anything.
The government has in the past made statements on how it has or plans on saving money. The wording of such a statement though is probably key to ensuring it does not run afoul with any other rules and laws (also assuming that such a statement is both (a) true and (b) indicated in some public government document).
But that's just my opinion - and regardless of whether it is correct, it still in no way guarantees you will keep your job after making such a statement on a govt or related site.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Second... I don't want my tax dollars being used for a mirror server. Plenty of other people do that already, and even if they didn't, we have bittorrent.
Indeed. Government should be as efficient as possible. As a public servant, your responsibility is to the taxpayers. You should offer only those contributions which do not increase the burden on those taxpayers, or which directly benefit them.
If you can't contribute bugfixes or enhancements, then contribute by filing bug reports and feature requests. Possibly documentation, but only if it is something that you, your coworkers, or your eventual replacement would use in the future. (IE documenting the structure of an unclear config file, not writing a detailed tutorial.)
Anything else you want to do, do it on your own time and your own dime.
Potential Employees (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you have the software you use listed somewhere to aid job applicants or to steer people familiar with that software toward you?
Re:Get others in Gov to use it (Score:1, Interesting)
The reality of Government IT is they usually have a budget, they want to spend ALL of that budget otherwise it gets reduced the following year, there are agencies that buy packaged software that will sit on shelves never opened just so they can be sure to spend enough of there budget not to have it reduced the following year.
Sponsor it (Score:5, Interesting)
You may not be allowed to directly simply give money to OSS. Many OSS projects offer prefered "development direction" for donors, though. If you want a feature in a certain tool, get into contact with the maker and see whether the project offers this option.
You're not simply giving money away. You are buying a feature. A feature that will be publically available and not exclusive to you, that's a given, but then again, I thought government spending was supposed to be done to make the public benefit from it.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:5, Interesting)
This means you could for-instance switch from Windows to KDE on 100 desktops and offer the KDE project the bargain basement fee of $10 per PC, per year to deliver the desktop the way you like and respond to concerns.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:3, Interesting)
The box itself is cheaper, but (extra) paid support for it is often quite a bit more expensive than what you get for many proprietary products.
It makes sense, too, since the company has to recoup costs somewhere. If boxes are cheap, and if the distro can simply be rebranded and distributed for free (*cough* CentOS *cough* OpenSUSE), then support is essentially the sole source of money.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:1, Interesting)
working in R&D for the federal government, I've been trying to promote open source scientific and technical software, as well as acrobat/photoshop/etc alternatives that are decent quality. Obviously I can't use my position to promote one solution over another. But my personal software choices make a local budget difference (a matlab license is not cheap). Also, when appropriate I reference the technical software I use in any conference and journal papers I write. "simulations were performed with the open source ELMER finite element code, etc." Using Octave, I've run across my share of bugs and fed them back into the system, and I documented typo's and edits in the Elmer documentation as I was learning it.
So, there are ways to contribute even if you aren't a coder. If you are, maybe you can argue benefit of a bit of your time improving and fixing the software. Keep it focused, though. don't want to detract from the cause.
Re:Donate (Score:2, Interesting)
I find it amazing how bureaucracy has reached such levels that the costs of employing the bureaucratic machine are much, much higher than the costs of corruption that it's supposed to prevent.
Re:bids and approved vendors (Score:5, Interesting)
That must have been one heck of a microwave. Back in a previous life, I worked for the State of Ohio. You had to go through a bidding process for things that cost $1K or more. (That may be different nowadays but that was the way things were back in the '80s. And it was amazing how many quotes for $980 or $995 you would get from suppliers; they knew the rules as well as we did.) For a microwave oven, we probably would have taken up a collection in the department. (We actually had a microwave back then. Wonder how it was paid for? I doubt it cost a grand, though.) I know that when I was in grad school, a bunch of us collected the money for a decent coffee maker for the lab; no bidding process required. :^)
We had to deal with approved vendor lists as well. They work as long as the people who made the list of vendors knew what they were doing. Back in the day when 8-inch floppies ruled the earth, there were as many formats as there were manufacturers (it seemed). After three failed attempts to use the approved vendors to get a single stinking box of floppies that would work in a PDP-11 floppy drive -- with each attempt taking about ten days from placing the order through the arrival of the wrong media -- I ordered some from the office supply store we walked past on the way back from lunch. Accounts payable was going to refuse to pay the store because they weren't "on the list". After we explained that they were holding up a federally funded research project, they backed off and paid the invoice.
As for bids, I doubt that they must accept the lowest bid. There was an established procedure we could go through to justify selecting a bid that was not the lowest cost. We didn't use it often because it was a pain to write up the justification but it was possible. Again, times may have changed so my experience may not apply any more. And California's budgeting process is infamous for being impossible to deal with. Ohio's may be just as bad now as far as I know.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:4, Interesting)
The original poster was vague about the type of open source software which is saving the taxpayers money. It may be a distribution, or it may be an entirely different animal, such as one single desktop application, or enterprise-level server software.
No, it doesn't. If the policy is, that you can't donate, then you can't *bleeping* donate. It is entirely possible this advice could lead to charges of fraud, other felony charges for misappropriation of funds, and jail time.
The support level circumstances vary per vendor, and size, of the Open Source project. For your particular example, there is no company, which I know of, that offers Support Level Agreements for "just KDE". However, if the OSS package is a "supported" package by your distro vendor of choice, then you legitimately purchase support contracts. Using your example of 100 KDE desktops, you could buy 100 Kubuntu Advanced Support contracts from Canonical at roughly $120 per year which comes out to $12,000, not $1,000 as in your example. Chances are that you are using more than KDE, as one component, in an entire distribution. If you are going to advocate buying support, then advocate buying a support contract. There are obviously other ways you can contribute to an Open Source distribution project, other than monetary contributions. Things that come to mind are: working on documentation or translations; filing bug reports; packaging software.
Many large and well-established Open Source products have companies that will offer paid support for that particular product. If my organization wants a support contract for wine, because they might need to run a Windows-only Office Suite or a particular version of Photoshop. Then they could buy a copy of Crossover Pro from Codeweavers for roughly $70 per copy, and a support extension for $35 year per copy. This money gets you both support, and directly supports the enhancement and development of wine. Although the prices vary, this same support system has been applied to other projects such as Samba. You can buy enterprise support from a company such as Likewise, a vendor who offers a "Samba-like" product and directly supports the enhancement and development of Samba through paid developers. Otherwise, you can buy support from a distro vendor such as Novell or RedHat at a cost of $60-800 per server each year, just for the base OS and standard server applications. Enterprise distro maintainers also have paid developers whom contribute a great deal to the enhancement and development of enterprise-level server applications.
Some exceptions are when you have a small, hobbyist, higher-ed, or government Open Source project. Maybe it is a new and small project. Perhaps they have only 1 or 2 developers that work on the project part-time. These type of projects probably do not have an established support system. The developers may not even be able to take monetary contributions, or have a system set up to do so. Some developers may have to opt for gifts purchased through an Amazon wist list for legal reasons. Accepting donations may be a legal issue with an employer who pays the developer to work on that particular Open Source project. It is another issue if the developer is a government employee and is forbidden to take large gifts, or accept money, which could be construed as a bribe (assuming they work on this project as part of their job).
I was involved in consulting work, a few years back, for a fairly large hospital. The hospital made use of Open Source Firmware for commodity Linksys Wireless Routers.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:3, Interesting)
I will venture to guess that the parent poster is in Europe. There are wacky laws there on bids and tenders. Any one who submits a bid and doens't get selected can hold the tender up for ungodly lengths of time with (seemingly) silly arguments ($10 per desktop is too low of a price, What they really want is windows blah blah blah).
I used to be in the business of selling analytical instrumentation there, and you can win the tender, and not get the order for 6 or more months. And fritter away your profit fighting all the bullshit flung at you by competitors.
Re:bids and approved vendors (Score:1, Interesting)
I concur.
State of GA has a system in place similar to that. In fact, we actually put something out to bid then used a quote we had because none of the bids came back beating that price. Then if we want to fill out paperwork for sole source or sole provider we don't necessarily have to put it out for bid.
But office supplies? You guys must not be ordering from Staples. We just log on to the site, pick what we want (state contract prices), get no-extra-charge next day shipping and it gets billed to our purchasing card. Everyone's purchasing card gets examined with a fine tooth comb every month. And we have pencils, whichever ones we damn well please.