A New Year's Idea: Pay For Some Freedom

It's not a contradiction: Free software costs money. (That's because server space, bandwidth, coffee, electricity, computers, and workspace all cost money.) Besides which, the time it takes to code new window managers, programming libraries (and languages), web browsers, and all the other goodies which make a modern computer useful may be spent as a labor of love, but it's time that competes with real-world jobs, family time, vacations in the Riviera and sleep. Besides the relative few who work at work on their Free software projects, the programmers, project managers, web-site maintainers, documentation jockeys and QA volunteers behind the programs we enjoy every day don't seem to be in it for the money, so much as the thrill of releasing new software, a desire to make their own world a little better, and for plain old fun. The staffers and volunteers who put long hours and dedication into organizations trying to safeguard online freedoms are also obviously interested in rewards that go way beyond salaries. This New Year's, consider giving them a little money anyhow. Here are a few ideas; you're invited to point out projects and organizations that I've left out.

As you may have read the other day, the FreeBSD project is now taking donations via PayPal. And if you're in a clean, roots-UNIX kind of mood, the folks at OpenBSD and NetBSD (NetBSD PayPal) would probably also appreciate your goodwill, not to mention your money, hardware and time.

If you don't have a specific project in mind, but would like to donate some of your chunk of the time-money continuum to a worthy software undertaking, a good place to start is Software in the Public Interest. They can take both general donations as well as earmark for projects they support, like Berlin, Debian, GNOME and more. (Not into GNOME? KDE could use some assistance, including money, too.)

If you like the projects funded by the boxed-distribution makers (like paying for full-time work on endeavors like KOffice), you can do more than buy the box: Mandrake has recently formed something called the Mandrake Club as a gathering place for both people and funds.

To encourage (and reward) cross-platform goodness, supporting the Mozilla project is hard to beat. (This story was posted using a 9.7 build using the wonderful Modern theme.) Source of Mozilla wisdom Mozillazine could use some help paying for the switch to a new host, and to defray ongoing costs. Another good place to cast your perls is Yet Another Foundation, which supports the somewhat scrutable development of the not-so-scrutable Perl.

More generally, consider investing some money in organizations like the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), all of which help battle (in court and in the marketplace of ideas) the forces who wish to monitor and otherwise exert top-down control of your computer and everything to do with your on-line life.

Remember, with all of these projects, non-monetary contributions are welcomed as well -- if you can write or correct some online documentation, create test-cases to root out weaknesses, or create some pretty graphics to smooth the user experience, you can contribute. (Long-distance pizza deliveries to developers are also generally appreciated.) Teaching a coworker, classmate, parent or friend how to set up mailfilters on a Linux box, or how to edit photos in the GIMP, is a nice way to save them money, too. Making a difference locally might also mean contributing some time, money or hardware to help run local LUG events.

Note: Many of the organizations named above are set up as 501(c) charities; if you'd like to claim any charitable contributions as tax deductions, now's the time to get the postmark, at least if it's important to you for those donations to be on the current calendar year. For a few more ideas on ways to donate geekily this year, see Jack Bryar's Newsforge column with some more links.

And a Happy New Year's!

Comments

Do you use PROPAGANDA wallpaper?

[Bowie J. Poag]

Like my stuff? Sure, its free -- but rent isn't. :) You can help pay my rent by going here and clicking on the $1.00 Donation button. Quick and easy. Doing so will help ensure that the tiles remain free for you and others to enjoy. :)

Shamelessly begging for pocket change in the post-dot-com economy, ;)

Don't forget Freenet

[Sanity]

Freenet has been taking donations for a while, and has already used some of these funds to hire two developers to work full-time on the project for two months each (for less money than they could earn at Starbucks). The project is nearing its next major release, 0.5, and could really use your help financially to allow more developers to devote more of their time to the project.

Tax Deductions: Donate BEFORE Jan 1, 2002

[Kozz]

Donate NOW, before the New Year, and not only will those non-profit organizations benefit, but you have another itemized tax deduction for the year 2001. It's a smart move!

You can buy a reiserfs service contract

[hansreiser]

Donate the time to ask your company to buy a reiserfs service contract. (Lycos-Europe will tell you it is very happy it bought a service contract, and that our service is excellent.) Estimate 1% of the storage hardware cost that is used for reiserfs (you don't need to be more than roughly accurate, and only need to update the number once a year), and that will get you a priority service contract better than what you could get from a proprietary software vendor (with us the code authors are the ones who answer your emails.) You can use paypal at www.namesys.com/support.html, or send a check, or whatever your accounting department likes to do. Take the time to be as careful to buy service contracts on mission critical free software as you would to buy service contracts on proprietary products, and there will be lots more free software in this world.

Re:Really Giving to the Community

[Pinball Wizard]

OpenBSD really has the right idea. I also purchase this.

1 - because it really is worth it, but also

2 - its damn hard to make it work without just buying the CD's. Theo copyrighted the ISO image of OpenBSD, and you can't find ISOs of it online legally. Sure, its a little bit of arm-twisting to get people to buy the CD, but it works! There is no reason other distros couldn't follow suit. GPL means you have to publish the code; it does not mean you have to provide bootable ISOs for everyone to download.

Re:Overhead expenses

[Overfiend]

On SPI's site for example, I can't find any record of how much of donations go to administration or how much the leaders of the organization are paid.

You don't find any such information on SPI's site because at present there is no policy for paying SPI officers ("leaders") anything at all. There isn't even yet a formal policy for SPI charging member projects (such as Debian) anything either, not even domain registration fees when SPI personal take care of such things.

The current proposal is for SPI to charge member projects 5% of any funds deposited on a member project's behalf, and for the cost of any expenses accrued on a member project's behalf when SPI acts under the direction of that member project.

There are no plans to pay SPI officers any sort of salary, stipend, or other form of compensation. SPI officers and board members are volunteers.

I acknowledge this stuff should be up on the website. Once the SPI Board has voted on such a policy and made it official, it will be. Our next Board Meeting is scheduled for January 26th, and this subject is on the agenda.

Members of the Free Software community are invited to express their views on policies like this to the SPI Board of Directors. Just send mail to "board" at "spi-inc.org".

-- Branden Robinson, SPI Treasurer