Burning Money on Open Source

We've talked about stock options and how in this day and age of booming technology start-ups, they can be a fast and risky way to make money, and with recent IPOs, some participants have managed to make money this way and found themselves very rich. Several folks involved enriched by these recent windfalls have talked about "giving something back to the community," and that's the subject of today's "Ask Slashdot." If you're interested, read on for an interesting and worthwhile question. What is the best way to give something back to the Open Source community, especially if you are looking to donate large sums of money?

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)."

Comments

Blah Blah

[Foogle]

This is the wrong question to "Ask Slashdot". Everyone here has a motive, a cause, and a bias. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you're going to donate money, it ought to be for your motive, cause, or bias.

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."

Debian

[EraseMe]

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

Honorable

[348]

Although I think this is honorable and wanting to give back to the open source community and/or donate to a particular effort, I would have to recommend also visiting financial counsel. As a PHB and being fortunate to have options, I know first hand that supporting cause X or foudation Y makes you feel good and the community will give back 10 fold in many ways.

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 /..

How cynical....

[Peter Eckersley]

I'm normally a very cynical person, but if there's one thing that tempers my dim view of hummanity, it's the open source movement.

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.

Docu?

[QuMa]

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.

first impulse

[acarlisle]

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

The Free Software Foundation

[Fooby]

One very solid option is obviously the Free Software Foundation, that brought us the GNU project. You can be sure that they will put it to good use, although the results may not seem as visible, immediate, or essential. The funds will be used to pay their administrative costs, their salaried programmers, and whatever causes they adopt, or whatever. See their site.

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.

Make Sure You Invest Through An Organization

[deerpig]

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.

Some suggestions

[rodgerd]

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.

GPL defence

[maastrictian]

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.

Another idea

[Wellspring]

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).