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FSF Announces Corporate Patronage Program

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the putting-cash-where-your-mouth-is dept.

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."

5 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Suggestion... by LinuxParanoid · · Score: 5, Insightful


    The FSF should at least offer to make the company's names on its Patron sponsor list linkable to the companys' websites. It is 2003 you know.

    I hate having to go to Google to type in "OEone Corporation" to find out who the heck they are.

    --LP

  2. Time was when.... by tomlord · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Time was when.... by the+Atomic+Rabbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the reason is that, unlike 10 years ago, many companies are now in the business of writing free software. There's no reason for the FSF to take donations to do something that businesses such as Red Hat are already doing. The FSF is going where it's needed - providing legal support to ensure that existing free software remains free, and providing hosting services for volunteer-run projects.

  3. Ooo... by Chester+K · · Score: 4, Funny

    Quick, someone tell Microsoft about this! I bet they'd love to sign on!

    --

    NO CARRIER
  4. this is a good thing by dh003i · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a good thing. The FSF is getting corporations involved in free (libre) software. Goes to counteract all those nay-sayers who say "RMS and the FSF are communists!" No, they're not communists. Not even close. In fact, RMS and the FSF have repeatedly scolded licenses which are "like the GPL" but prevent corporations from using them on those terms.

    --
    social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen