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

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 /..

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.

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.