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FSF Announces Corporate Patronage Program
Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced a 'Corporate Patronage Program' to allow companies to support the work of the FSF. The members already include IBM, HP, Ada Core Technologies and MySQL. Interested parties should contact Ravi Khanna."
Time was when contributions to FSF funded programmers busy writing new free software. This appears to be far less the case, these days -- at a period of time when, 10 years ago, I would have predicted that FSF would now be doing more or less what RHAT does.
This is a delicate criticism, of course. It's not at all that where there money goes isn't important -- far from it.
But, hey, where's my "complete GNU system" (other than in arguments that various non-FSF distributions should be called GNU/Linux)?
-t
Its finnaly great that big companies like IBM are not only getting into the swing of writing thier own free software, but also funding other projects (like jabber). The world needs less market grabbers like Microsoft and more sharing and careing.
Gnome wasnt built in a day.
Maybe they will take a few million shares from you?
I hope that this new organization is less secretive than the KDE League has been. All it did was act like a roach motel, where the money checked in but never checked out. I don't think they have provided an accounting even yet.
Thanks... I know. Many times what I see as fun dry sarcasm (the false naivety of not knowing the GNU logo, as reflected in my original post) gets across as simply idiotic. That's the risk I take when I type first and think second, maybe?
As much as I love GNU/FSF and enjoy the fruits of their labor, I think that in the real world, acceptance by companies and customers and clients el. al. involves MARKETING. And as far as that goes, IMHO the GNU logo is rather; well, to risk karma+life... ugly. Just my opinion. I own a small biz. I don't have $500 to throw into it for a one year membership, but I plan to soon (yes, I really do plan on joining, and the link will find it's way into my .sig). But I won't put that FSF logo on my home page as much as I would have likes to. I coded my site and did all my graphics and the simple yet crisp look of the page IMO is sweet. But! Putting that GNU head on my front page is not going to happen, as much as I'd like to have bragged to friends+clients about supporting the FSF (as a geek, it is sure to get me bragging rights over a beer with friends). Maybe IBM and the other members might feel the same way? I could imagine a nice little logo making it's way onto IBM's front page, but someone their size is sure to not want that "Boars Head(TM) Roast Beef Sold Here Fresh Daily" logo.
Maybe www.fark.com can help in creating a new logo? Using Gimp, of course.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, Microsoft's "corporate values" program encompasses the Microsoft "Giving Campaign". That "Giving Campaign" encourages donations to charitable organizations with a 100% match by Microsoft of any employee donation. The only restriction is it can't be a purely religious organization, and it has to qualify as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization - and FSF does. (After all, if you're going to write off your half of the donation, Microsoft wants to, too.)
Anyway, my point is, I'd be surprised if Microsoft wasn't already supporting the FSF a little - because employee donations are matched under the Giving Campaign. I know that there is already quite a bit of support among Microsofties for the EFF.
Probably the support would be more widespread, except the GPL is too restrictive for GPL-licensed software to be used in any Microsoft product - though there's lots of stuff compiled with GCC that ships out - like the WebTV console's software. Free software distributed under the less restrictive library licenses, like the png decoder or the boost library, is widespread.
(sig) The last bug isn't fixed until the last user is dead. (/sig)
I have a little trouble grokking FSF's international structure.
On FOSDEM, FSF Europe was present, as well as RMS. While the FSFE was doing its own campaign, RMS was handing "FSF Associate Membership Sign-up" cards, with all the numbers in dollars on it and the address in Boston.
While Free Software is an international thing, I'd like to see some kind of representation back from where the funds came. For instance, spending high $$ on fighting American law structures is just so-and-so relevant to me, as long as the Netherlands/ Europe have their own situation.
I think that if the FSF would be willing to accept international donations in general, it should also take some time to explain how it benefits people outside of America (or how it doesn't, I don't care if it advertises well, but I'd like to get the picture), and how a donation to the American "chapter" affects the FSF Europe or another local chapter.
OTOH, if the FSF wants Europeans to become a member of the FSF Europe instead, to better support that organisation and local issues, they should also make that clear.
Just my 2 eurocents.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]