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GUADEC/Gnome Fund Appeal
With the end of the year approaching, the Gnome Foundation has put together an appeal for help. You can also just head over to Gnome.org to contribute directly - and this year, they become a charity organization, meaning that contributions for US citizens will be tax deductions. Yay, tax deductions!
Now if you don't like givin' open source programers a bit of cash and gettin' a tax deduction then don't do it.
I won't.
But I feel that they are a valid charity because they previded a free public service with-out goverment funding or ADs.
When the government grants tax-deductible status, that is government funding. If you are in the 30% tax bracket, 30% of "your" donation came from the government.
But that is simply not the point. There are charities to help homeless people, cancer victims, orphans, and third-world famine victims -- just to name a few causes. That's a whole lot more worthwhile than sending money to people who are getting their jollies by coding a GUI.
By what criteria?
By my criteria.
Help a cancer victim and they'll die eventually anyway, help a famine victim and they might last until the next famine...
Reducing human suffering is more important than writing GUIs. I guess your point is that you'd rather see people suffer and die than have to use Gnome in its current state -- which it got to with no tax-deductible donations.
Help develop software that can spare the governments in the third world from spending money on proprietary software and they'll have more money over to spend on fighting famine.
The amount of money spent by third-world countries on software is insignificant compared to the cost of fighting famine, river blindness, AIDS, cancer, etc. If they got all of their computers for free, it would make little difference. The amount of money that, say, Sudan could save by using free software would make no significant difference to lives of the people of that country. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Besides, there is already viable, free software. I don't think that an even more polished version of Gnome is what will cure the AIDS epidemic in sub-saharan Africa.
Me, I prefer being charitable for more longrange goals.
Are you sure that you don't just prefer charities that create software that you personally benefit from?
First off, what makes you think that the GNOME project, or any free software project does not help the less fortunate.
To some small extent, it does. But it helps the fortunate far more. The majority of third-world countries have very few computers relative to their population. The amount of money that could be saved on software would have no discernible effect on the lives of their citizens.
The GNOME project, along with the rest of GNU, is constantly being deployed in less developed countries.
And it is good enough already. These people need food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, not a more polished version of a Linux GUI.
How the hell is any free software project self-indulgent?
Because it is a hobby for those involved. They do it for personal fulfillment.
They clear their overhead and donate their product and services to anyone who needs them, just like any legitimate charity.
Do you think that Habitat for Humanity will be donating buildings to Sun and RedHat? Of course not. They will donate them to needy families. Legitimate charities do not invest tax-deductible contributions to develop products that are resold by big business.