Slashdot Mirror
Burning Money on Open Source
The following was submitted by a Slashdot Reader who would like to remain anonymous:
"I'm in the lucky position that my current job will provide me with some money through options in the near future; not a fortune, but still a lot. Which project or part of the Open Source community should I support with part of that money?
In a few weeks' time, I will, for the first time of my life, have a sizeable amount of money at my disposal, due to stock options that were granted to me (not a small feat to a German, while stock options are still mostly unknown, or limited to highest management, in most of Europe). So, I have some money I could invest wisely to get even more riches, or I could give back something to the community which I personally owe a lot to, including part of the qualification for my current job.
I'm more than willing to give part of my profit from my options to some project, like in the region of USD 20,000. What project should I give my money to? Which of the many (I guess) applicants are worthwile? Understand that I'm not looking for an investment; I'm rather looking to give back to the community something for what I think I earned due to that community.
Given the fact that my personal preference is FreeBSD (although I understand some of the advocates of the GPL), how would I decide who to give money to? Obviously, there are quite a number of people I could more or less personally support with money, but that leaves me with a bad feeling. (Giving money to friends might seem like a sensible thing, but money always distorts personal relationships, unless there is a overriding cause.)
So, what I'm looking for is something special, which wouldn't be financed by a Big Shot, but for which a donation of some money (or the equivalent in hardware) would make all that difference.
Am I wrong? Should I just buy Red Hat or VA shares? What else is out there that is not commercially viable, but very interesting or even necessary to gain major market acceptance for Open Source systems?
Mind you, I wouldn't mind making a lot of dough on this, but this is a very minor consideration (and given the recent discussion on start-ups, 20k is nothing)."
That said, here's my advice: Don't donate $20,000 to an open source project. The big guys (XFree, GNU, Gnome, KDE) could always use it, but I don't think your money would improve their software any, just make them bigger projects. It's the little guys who I see as important; the startup OSS game developers, the small window manager that you see potential in, the guy who's working on a better file manager... you get the idea. But $20,000 is more money than most small projects could adequately handle.
Better advice: Take the money and buy some hardware: A bunch of medium-grade Linux workstations, video cards, etc. and donate them to developers who otherwise might be working on out-of-date, or non-standard equipment. Or maybe they could just use another testing machine -- who knows, but it would sure be useful for a load of developers I know of.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
With New Zealand's relatively small supply of IT personnal - companies are offering stock options to encourage both company loyalty and to entice new staff. If in fact this IT stock bubble bursts I think the entire industry will be severly damaged. Many people are leaving for the US as it is.
The *nixes and *BSDs are just the OS kernels.   Many are already being supported by commercial entities.
If I had $$$, I would support the application projects that most of the *nixes and *BSDS can run.   Ports are usually pretty simple between distributions and the application and documentation projcts could sure use the money!!!!
. JMHO.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
One word for you: Debian.
If anyone deserves extreme credit it would be the wonderful guys at debian.org that have single handedly created the most powerful Linux dist with no real commercial backing.
I would certainly send some money their way (if they would even accept it?)..
EraseMe
But,
If you don't do it right you will get absolutely hosed financially in the long run. If you don't balance the charitable load and carefully execute, the tax man will eat you alive.
Quick example. Say you are going to donate 10K of your option money to a cause. First off all the pre tax verbage in the package really only takes out about half thats owed. So even on a charitable contribution, be prepared to knock off another 20%. Now your dealing with 8K. Next, execution, meaning what form of donation, grant, product, etc. These methods all have pro's and cons. Lastly, how is the donation going to be used. If its for product, thats one thing, helping support a legal defense fund, thats another, monies going toward a non-profit needing admin and support is still another.
The long and short of it is, unfortunately /. is not really the best place to get financial advise, although I'm sure many different opinions will be shared on where to donate, bottom line, Get professional financial advice along with other guidance, like here at /..
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Another idea is services. Sponsor internet connectivity, source code distribution etc. If you're in entrepreneurial mode you might consider setting up a service like SourceForge over here in Europe. Mirror stuff, provide CVS, webhosting and the like.
Just thinking out loud here :) But my main advice would be since you seem to be located in Europe: sponsor/donate/support something over here.
Cya
bBob
--
*sig*
Pick your favorite university and donate it to some sort of open source lab/chair. Give them the challenge of getting matching funds for it. Long term it's good for everybody. More open source programmers. More open source projects.
True, everyone has their own project barrows to push (see my signature below :). Howerver, I would like to make a more general suggestion.
Why don't you finnance bug-fixing? Equivalently, you could pay people to smooth out those little inelegancies which make free software harder to use, but which most hackers will grumble about rather than fixing.
This could be done using some kind of "bounty" to the first person to fix something up, or by some kind of specific "contractual" agreement with specific coders.
Fixing copyright
How about paying some people to do the stuff we don't like to do? Like documentation, and maybe even user interfaces, though I'm quite happy with the current UI's in the OS world.
My first impulse as to how to respond to this question is to recommend donating the money to a legal fund that protects open-source interests (assuming one exists -- if not, something like the EFF might be good). Open source supports itself mostly through donation of man-hours -- developers working for free. You could always horde the money, work less, and develop more, but if you're looking to really benefit other OSS developers, contributing to their defense is a non-trivial gesture. Although contributions in the way of better hardware, etc. are valuable, one aspect of this enterprise that requires a signifigant amounts of money is the hiring and retaining of legal services. You can't kludge a solid legal defense on your own. That way, next time a software liscense comes under fire, or a patent threatens to restrict development, the open-source community has the means to respond to such legal threats.
-ac
Another option is something like Axel Boldt's Free Software Bazaar, although that concept has a few well-discussed problems of its own.
Debian is certainly a worthy cause, as mentioned, but they don't take donations--rather, they relegate them to Software in the Public Interest.
The hardware idea is certainly a good one.
What are the biggest threats to the concept of OS software? Are there any
legal battles looming? Could a war chest be set up to help fight GPL
violations and the like?
Whatever you decide to do, find an organization like Linux International or the Linux Fund to channel the money through.
Find what you want to donate to and then let them manage the money and ensure it does what you intend it to do.
This is what we are intending to do for any donations to our project, which is promoting localization of Linux in South East Asian countries to help third world developers and small companies.
There's a lot of shareware and freeware out there--folks who make their money putting out a product and hoping people in good heart give money back.
I know this certainly won't hit the 20K mark, but go through everything you own/use and such and send $100.00 checks to everyone on the list. Or search through Freshmeat for a couple of days and see what projects you think are pretty interesting and freeware/shareware like. There's a whole group of people out there who try to make their living off of the stuff they're writing. I would think that $20,000 would go a long way for a whole slew of them.
Also, $100.00 is a small amount of money that you won't have to worry about the ramifications of taxes and silly stuff like that (i don't think--IANA[whoever is involved with that]). And it's a small enough amount that it won't overwhelm the person you're giving it to. Large amounts of money to small groups who aren't used to having money tends to create a beaurocratic backlash... May inadvertantly kill some projects or cause the members to be angry with eachother.
And if you don't spend it all in the first week, that's cool. Just keep up the practice and such. At a bare minimum, it's a good motive to keep looking at what's out there. Might find solutions to problems you never knew you had.
/will
Your financial planner will be able to guide you towards an educated choice. They might even suggest that you support your local church or charity. I'm thinking that you might feel more community spirit by helping your fellow Germans that are less fortunate than you.
Also, some thing else to consider: the common thread between most millionares of today is that they hold on very tightly to their money. The other common thread is that they did it over a long period of time (not through IPOs).
Good luck!
The FSF: while this might go against the grain for a BSD guy, the FSF have done and continue to do a bunch of useful stuff, have a proven track record, and most of their major projects (GCC, OpenStep, a free Display PostScript) are usefull on a variety of platforms.
The EFF: a bunch of people doing good and fighting stupid laws. Which might not sound like much to do with free software, but if you think about the DCMA and the like, the ramifications are pretty scary.
The XFree86 project: A free X system is pretty important - one of the factors allowing Linux and the BSDs to be taken seriously as alternatives to commercial *ixen for workstation/desktop users. Unlike a lot of improtant projects, the XFree guys are perpetually underfunded and always need more hardware and cash (as well as programmer time).
Scholarships: One of the things needed are programmers to do stuff. A scholarship for a thesis which involves work on useful free software has got to be a winner, and may get the most bang for your buck.
Documentation: Documentation is one of the worst areas for free software. Hire a tech writer to document popular, poorly understood applications and give the docs away.
What we should do, is to create a fund that people with too much money on their hand can donate to. OSS Developers needing resources could then apply for a grant. You would have something like an advisory board deciding who gets what, and how much.
The more i think of this, the better it sounds. Companies making money off OSS Software would have a way of giving back to the community without having to worry about who the money should be sent to.
Developers doing especially interesting things could get money from the fund to work on their project or hardware needed to write drivers could be bought.
A lot of projects needs money, and there are lots of companies and people that could give it. This would be a way for them to meet.
What do you think?
Hiring a small team (3-10) of professional documenters for a year would benefit the open source community immensely.
Their mission would be to find or solicit mid-level to large projects that are past the alpha design stage, interview the lead developers to gain enough detail to write an 80% user and design documents, and hand it back to the project for normal, on-going development.
The main benefit is to have someone skilled in writing "lead" the development of the documentation for a short period.
I say give it to some organization devoted to defending the rights of open source developers. The GPL will be tested one day and its very important it win that test.
--Chris
I keep forgetting to put the FSF on my "they need it more than I do" list along with Planned Parenthood and the ASPCA.
Good call.
I'd also like to third (?! -- or twentieth, by now
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
How about handing it out to a few OSS Game developers?
With 20k you could probably make at least 4 teams speed up a bit.
I'm currently involved in the making of a game that will be released on MAC, Win32 and Linux on a shared disc.
We have serious problems with the funding so I guess that the others have the same problem. In our case the most of the money would go to graphics packages like PS, LW and such. This is because all our graphicans are MAC and Win32 users and wont even consider using GIMP.
Anyway, a few OSS Game developer teams could sure use the money. And if the OSS community suddenly get a few cool games. There sure would be a few more reasons for those balancing between OSS and Win32, MAC to switch over.
Ofcourse this is my biased comment, I would LOVE to see a big OSS game myself.
Note. I'm not trying to get the money myself! The rest on the team are NOT OSS supporters so. It's going to be closed source. But, it helps me get those coding fingers in place.
Hi,
Why don't you give the money to a school so they could buy computers with Linux inside. I think it's a lot more important for kids to get initiated to computers than the developers that can easily make money since they are usually well educated.
Luugi
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
with that said, imo, the best way to contribute to open source is to find some time and write some code. while money is nice, remember, money for open source cannot hire more programmers or find bugs, or create applications to fill a large hole.
just daveo's $0.02 ;0)
-DAVEO
If you really want to help the Open Source community, talk to a computer teacher in a local middle school/high school. Find out how it works and what effect your donation to that department would have. Then help them out-- directly through funds or (better!) indirectly through computers and time spent helping kids learn to code.
I'll bet this even improves your own skills. It will do more than giving to any organization- even the EFF (another good cause).
There already are several open source development coordination sites. Browse those and see if one of the existing sites or projects tickles your fancy.
I actually agree here. More precisely I say, put your money in the hands of somebody doing something cool tat you wouldn't bother with and he doesn't want to do.
As an example. When I talk to new Linux users one of the major problems they complain of is that none of the text mode editors follow any conventions they are familiar with. I.e. You learn VI at university and you learn Emacs on the Job.
If you are not an IT professional then you probably expect [shift + down arrow] to select a line of text and [ctrl + X] to cut it.
That's how all the GUI text editors work and EDIT.COM from dos dose the same thing. It's a small job and $5,000 would probably get it done. As it stands nobody who wants it can write it and nobody who can write it wants it.
There are several such small projects that go nowhere and will never get done without funding.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
You might consider the Open or Net BSD's - they are not as well-funded as FreeBSD, and some of the code you like in FreeBSD was probably developed on one of them. Remember that the BSD family, despite being "fractured", is actually fairly cooperative. (I'm a big fan of NetBSD, myself.)
You want to do them a world of good? Offer the $20k to support a specific port or driver project that's languishing for lack of time, or to get a software developer to port a package to some free system. $20k may not be enough in the latter case, but it might nudge them over the edge.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
We see these meteoric rushes to riches with the recent linux-related IPO booms and all, but upon closer inspection it's all based on nothing. Companies with some of the best IPO's and stock prices (a la Red Hat) are operating in the hole. The whole e-commerce thing is based on speculation. Although it is really cool that these newfound fortunes are going to in part be put to good use, what happens if (or rather when) the investors take a good look and realize that these companies are losing money every year? ...but more on topic, If I had that much money to spend on open source projects I believe I would give it to the likes of xmms to research the quicktime format for a linux player ;)
-invictus
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#!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777iX+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
--Ks9
I know that it's less convenient, but consider an involved donation. Rather than just sending a cheque somewhere, it can be much more helpful (to the organisation) and satisfying (to you) to give money as well as some of your own time.
A prime example is educational programs, like we discussed on Slashdot yesterday. There are plenty of organisations working to teach disadvantaged children how to use computers, and most of them are disgustingly under-funded.
There are other groups -- Computers For Kids kind of things -- that are in the business of taking old computers and turning them into useful learning vessels for children. Most of these programs are inexplicably hooked on Microsoft software, and a $20,000 shot in the arm along with a little hand-holding could result in hundreds of children learning the ways of *nix and OSS.
In order to make these donations useful to you and to them, some involvement, even if just for a few days, would be immensely helpful. You would get to direct how your money got spent and you could see the results of your hard work -- excited children that think that Tux is way cooler than Mickey Mouse(tm). And the organisations would be pushed in a direction that they might not otherwise have discovered, instead wandering down the path of closed-source and Visual Basic into the Land of Mediocrity.
I envy your opportunity. I've never had much money to give away, but, when I do, I try and do it in an involved manner. Some call it ego-boosting, but I call it the most satisfying donation that you can give. Any fool (think Bill Gates) can give some money and walk away. But a rare few fools give some money and their time. You got your money through your expertise. Give away a bit of each.
-Waldo
I'd say donate to support Carmac in his fight for the GPL of the Quake 2 code but I don't think he needs it...
OpenSource doesn't need money to write code (the coders, etc. aren't doing this for the money), it does need money to fight legal battles against large corporations.
Another idea would be to donate it to a local school or other group teaching programming/computing with OpenSource products.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Please don't start with this institutionalized begging, whereby everyone associated with an open source IPO is required to fork half of their loot back into your coffers.
That's funny.. from what I've experienced, stock options are about the safest stock-market relatedthing you can do... There is no risk to you, and you only have to buy the stock when you want to sell it!
VA Linux is tying to sell essentially stock PC's.
Pehrpas one thing they both share are huge competitors and razr-thin margins.
I sort of liked the concept of buying a few shares of freedom infringing or patent offending companies to give one a voice at the shareholder meetings.
/. pat on the back. :)
20K as a starter fund would give one a lot of flexibility to do just that, and with many companies at once. A lot of influence (or at least input/intelligence) could be had for just a few dollars. And, the money remains yours - it could even turn a profit. All while contributing to the community and protecting freedom.
In any case, I agree with many posters here, you should definitely seek some sort of financial advice from (tax?) professionals in addition to whatever you might glean from here.
Please let us know what you decided to do so we can collectively give a
Just my 2 little copper coins...
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
(disclaimer: I'm a student, so I'm not exactly suggesting this from an impartial point of view)
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Just lurking, thanks!
One could hire a gaggle of lawyers, and begin filing patent applications over every variety of technical contrivance embodied in the collective open source pool. These patents would then become public property, granted under auspices of an agreement based upon the principles of CopyLeft.
The purpose of such patents would be twofold. First, they would be defensive patents, against corporate hoarding, as it were. Second, and perhaps more important, they should serve as a guide to people who wish to impliment whatever concept that the patent protects. This idea occurred to me whist reading about the court action re: DeCSS. It seems that the defendant's attorneys included the entire text of the DeCSS algorithm in the public court documents. This is a splendid idea, and fits well into the scheme of patents. Such patents should include an appendix that describes in detail how the concept was implimented. The actual source code need not be included, but salient concepts about what the code must do, what kind of things caused problems, and the solutions thereto.
I have recently realized that Open Source is just the tip of the iceberg of the kind of communal, cooperative efforts that will eventually lead us to become a collective intelligence. This is a new, and wonderful thing. I look forward to interesting times. -- Norm Reitzel (Blue Water Ventures)
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
My understanding is that you still get the tax break (Laws may very in your country).
This is my understanding: You set up a modest fund. The principal slowly grows over time, and they skim off money yearly for donations to non-profit orgs. A small percentage "skimmed" for donations means that the principal will grow faster, meaning that the integral of the money given to open source over a long time is larger, but the short term donations are very small. You set up the rules for deciding who gets the donations, etc.
IMHO, this is the best way to contribute to the future of OpenSource. If you make a bad decission one year, you didn't throw all of your donation down the tube, there's still money for next year. You ensure that your donation gets invested instead of being spent on short-sighted goals that may not pan out.
Karl
I'm a slacker? You're the one who waited until now to just sit arround.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Most open source projects don't know how to accept donations, and for the money itself to make a difference (in terms of increasing amount of labor, as opposed to hardware purchases) it would take quite a bit of it. The nice thing about cosource.com is being able to join your donations with those of others in order to build up a more useful sum for supporting, etc.
If you just want to use the money as incentive, to carrot additional work out of people, that's fine too - and also quite doable through cosource.