Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SourceForge Donation System for Projects

Posted by michael on from the buddy-can-you-spare-a-quarter dept.

comforteagle writes "O'Reilly Developer News is reporting that SourceForge has begun a donations program for hosted projects in addition to the program which was for supporting the site. Apparently project admins have to opt-in to have the program setup for them, but it sounds like a pretty good idea. There's a 5% transaction fee, but that doesn't sound totally unreasonable. Perhaps a limit would be a good idea though." Sourceforge and Slashdot are both owned by VA Software Corp.

47 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. So...... by flewp · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will people pay for my open source sit on my ass project?

    --
    WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
  2. Transaction fee by nacturation · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's a 5% transaction fee, but that doesn't sound totally unreasonable.

    This is even less than what 2checkout charges. Not a bad deal at all and SourceForge gets a bit left over after processing fees.

    --
    Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    1. Re:Transaction fee by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 2, Informative

      "There's a 5% transaction fee, but that doesn't sound totally unreasonable... not bad at all"

      Minimum transaction fee: $1. So the percentage varies from 5% to 20% depending on how much you spend.

    2. Re:Transaction fee by nahdude812 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I was excited to see only a 5% fee also. However, this is a little inaccurate. Since SourceForge takes the donations over PayPal, PayPal also sticks in its surcharges. So it's 5% less good (for the developer) than just using PayPal to accept donations. I'm not sure what the benefit is here. My project already accepts donations through PayPal, and I'd been watching out for a new means as not everyone who has wanted to donate could or wanted to use PayPal.

      --
      Slay a dragon... over lunch!
  3. Sounds like... by ghettoboy22 · · Score: 2, Troll

    Good idea, but how many people will actually donate? Sounds more like shareware and not the "traditional" open-source we've come to love and appreciate. I can think of a few projects I wouldn't mind donating to, but that's the key word. A couple.

    1. Re:Sounds like... by MoonFog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't you think mostly the largest and most popular projects get the donations ? And when they do, perhaps some of the projects can use the money to expand further.
      I don't agree on the shareware thing, it's not like you have to pay.

      I see more and more OSS projects accepting donations, and my guess is that there will be more to come. The good thing is that you can support the ones YOU feel like need supporting! So the couple of projects you think of, fine, support them, I'm sure they could use your money.

    2. Re:Sounds like... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Open is not a synonym for free, a program can be open source even if you can't use it at all without paying for a license!!!

    3. Re:Sounds like... by bfree · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The beauty of this system (as well as it's potential downfall) is the possibility of the projects to redirect the money. Where projects use other projects as the basis of their work (say a cdrecord front-end), the front-end is more likely to attract end-user cash then the back-end but should recognise the appropriatness of redistributing some of their donations to the back-end. If this works well you would see the cash going into all the systems valued by the end user. If it goes badly you will see warefare within projects as well as between projects who share code. So who thinks the people within each project in charge of the money distribution will be able to do the right thing? I don't though I really wish they could!

      I would rather see donations going to a collection of groups like SPI, FSF, UserLinux, Mandrake, Lindows who can act as a front end to collect money and channel it out to places where they think it's going to get the best value for the donators (including giving it to themselves to keep working). This of course would not prevent warfare, but at least it would provide a handful of central decision making bodies to examine and evaluate so the community could bring to potential donators attention the history of how the bodies have acted and who therfore are the best choices depending on what you aim to promote. It is for this reason I see Mandrake and even Lindows as potential donation targets (and you could argue for most commercial linux offerings) as they both develop internally and by bringing in outside interests, Lindows going for the big publicity grabbing things (FrontPage replacement, XBoxLinux and of course the eponymous distro), Mandrake just looking to put together a good set of distros. Of course there is no means to make a donation to a US company (not sure around the world how this works) as Michael Moore delighted in by bringing around fat cheques to "give" to companies.

      --

      Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

  4. Could get messy by mcpkaaos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd hate to see what would happen the moment divvying the donations up among project members goes awry. How do you decide whose contribution deserves what portion? I'm not sure money is the right thing to toss into the OSS mix.

    --
    It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
    1. Re:Could get messy by mcpkaaos · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not which projet, which members of each project.

      --
      It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
    2. Re:Could get messy by MoonFog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't you think that's up to the project manager to decide ?

      I see your point, and it would mean that as a contributor to a project you trust the project manager with handling the money. Remember, each project must sign up for this opportunity themselves, they are not automatically a part of it.

    3. Re:Could get messy by CoderByBirth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Really?
      I for one consider this an excellent initiative from SourceForge.
      Project developers get a standardized solution for monetary support
      and SourceForge gets money to support their servers and are able to provide better service.

      Besides, in projects where the division of money
      would prove difficult the decision would be easy to just not join the program.
      Also, we're talking pennies here. Open source developers and their users are cheap SOBs :)

    4. Re:Could get messy by xaraya · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It hasn't been a problem for us at Xaraya with the donations, as we reinvest the donations that we receive back into marketing, pr, etc. We report back the balance of the donations about once a month to the other committers on the project and discuss and have specific goals for the money earmarked. If you expect to get rich from the donations coming in from a project, remember that there are other much more worthy charities that folks will donat to. Donations are generally $20 to $50 scale and are just nice ways of saying thanks, when someone doesn't have the knowledge to reinvest in the project via code / bug reports / docs.

    5. Re:Could get messy by eean · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree. I never have really understood where SF gets any money, which is worrying consider what a crucial role they play in the open source world. They could be a method of bringing in some good income.

  5. how about just using paypal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What do i need sf for? just givem my paypal email and end of story.

  6. PayPal vs SourceForge - Breakdown by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 5, Informative

    Assuming it's really only a 5% transaction fee (the linked site states: "A few other tidbits of information about this new donation system: SF.NET is taking a 5% piece of the transaction fee," which seems to suggest that the transaction fee is larger than 5%), here is the breakdown between PayPal and SourceForge.

    PayPal charges max 2.9%, plus $0.30.

    If you want to donate $1.00 to your favorite Free Software project, the fee is 5 cents through SourceForge and 33 cents through PayPal.

    If you want to donate $5.00, the fee is 25 cents through SourceForge and 54 cents through PayPal.

    If you want to donate $10.00, the fee is 50 cents through SourceForge and 59 cents through PayPal.

    If you want to donate $15, the fee is 75 cents through SourceForge and 74 cents through PayPal.

    If you want to donate $20.00, the fee is $1 through SourceForge and 88 cents through PayPal.

    PayPal is therefore a better solution for donations >= $15.

    --
    "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
    1. Re:PayPal vs SourceForge - Breakdown by sammy.lost-angel.com · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, if you give money through SourceForge the money is going back into them instead of a third party. This way they can continue to host these open source projects.

    2. Re:PayPal vs SourceForge - Breakdown by rizawbone · · Score: 4, Informative
      (the linked site states: "A few other tidbits of information about this new donation system: SF.NET is taking a 5% piece of the transaction fee," which seems to suggest that the transaction fee is larger than 5%)

      You can take 5% of anything. It doesn't suggest a larger percentage at all.

    3. Re:PayPal vs SourceForge - Breakdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      PayPal is therefore a better solution for donations >= $15.

      But you forget one thing.
      The fee will be used to provide much needed bandwidth and hosting space.

      Paypal does not contribute back.

    4. Re:PayPal vs SourceForge - Breakdown by hacker · · Score: 2, Insightful
      "The fee will be used to provide much needed bandwidth and hosting space."
      Excuse me, aren't they already backed by VA and IBM commercially as well as funded by dozens of non-Free Software banner ads littering the site's pages as it is?

      If this donation system actually begins to improve the service quality of SourceForge, while removing ALL banner ads, I see it as a good thing, except, that's not going to be the case here.

      Let's also not forget about SourceForge drifting away from the community, being non-Free itself (with the code being unavailable), crippling common development and project management tools, and hijacking projects for personal gain.

    5. Re:PayPal vs SourceForge - Breakdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Pay-Pal; an ex-managers story/observations: (copied from paypalsucks forums)

      I was a "middle management type" with Pay-Pal until leaving recently- partally due to my disgust over their internal security policies which have led to the mountain of complaints seen on this and other similar boards. There aren't many PP whistleblowers; during your "exit interview" a soon-to-be-former manager is warned, intimidated and threatened against doing the very thing I'm doing right now. But since I left to start my own business, there's not a thing they can do to me.

      Pay-Pal DID start as an honest, legitimate company with an innovative service concept. However, in my opinion, this concept can never actually WORK in the real world because there are legions of scammers all over the globe with reams of stolen credit card info and identifications just WAITING to swoop down on any new "payment service" like this that comes along. Credit-card transactions where the "card is not present" and thus personally examined by a clerk account for the overwhelming majority of fraud transactions. Comparitavely, there's very LITTLE credit card fraud at Wal-Mart, because the cashier actually sees both you and the card- and can ask for supporting identification at the point of sale. Unfortunatly, the high-risk, "card not present" transactions are the ONLY kind of transaction a company like PP can do, and boy- did the con artists find them in a hurry! The basic con was (and is) to use stolen identification information to open new PP accounts, funnel money into them with stolen credit card numbers, then transfer the money OUT of the account before PP gets the charge-back and can freeze it. Unfortunately, despite PP's claims of having a "tough anti-fraud program", these people are mostly impossible to catch, because when opening a new PP account, they DO have all the proper-appearing ID information (which was stolen or conned out of unsuspecting individuals, most of whom have never HEARD of Pay-Pal). When fraud is uncovered and the account is checked out, the perp is almost never caught, since it was almost always opened under a stolen identity, and he's long abandoned the mail-drop.

      Yes, the application process COULD be made more stringent, but it is felt (probably correctly) that a brand-new customer would certainly balk at doing things like sending in notorized copies of their driver's licence and so forth. So an "alternate strategy" for offsetting the charge-back losses slowly evolved at PP. It's the perfect scheme really; since PP can't usually catch the scammers and dosen't want to loose customer base by making things more stringent to start with- they decided to simply re-coup their chargebacks from the pockets (and accounts) of good, solid people under the easily-defensible and impossible-to-criticize guize of "Fraud Prevention and Enforcement".. Simply put, if you're a seller and somebody pays you with a stolen credit card, you're targeted by PP security and might very well have your account siezed, "investigated", closed- and the money retained by PP. (Yes... they simply "add" it to their revenues and spend it like any other income. You basically gave them permission to do this under the "terms and conditions" you originally agreed to. No, I KNOW you didn't really read it, but I bet you will the next time!). Even if the person paying you has NOT used a stolen credit card, he could have been been flagged by PP as "somebody to keep an eye on" for any one of numerous reasons. If he does business with YOU, especially multiple times- you're frozen. OCCASIONALLY some lucky soul will complain about the siezure, and when the case is "investigated" by PP he is "cleared" and the money unfrozen. This good fortune has nothing to do with an actual "investigation" (there aren't any, really). Pay-Pal WILL unfreeze a small percentage of the accounts (as a future defense against a potential class action), so you MAY benefit from a simple luck of the draw. See, if it ever comes down to a massive class-action lawsuit, or even testimo

  7. Still, needs a paypal acount... by AsparagusChallenge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even if I would like to redirect 100% to an organization, say, a couple months, still requires a valid paypal account's email address.

    Not that I think I could bring donations, but just to experiment a while it would be useful to have a chance to re-donate without the mess of creating a paypal account (I code just for fun, I may change my mind later but right now that's what I would like to do: redirect a 100% just to see what happens).

  8. OK, I'm an idiot by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 3, Informative

    Upon further investigation, I managed to locate this:

    http://sourceforge.net/tos/donations.php

    It seems that SourceForge is actually using PayPal to handle the donations. They're just taking 5% of PayPal's fee, at least that's how I read it, so they must have worked a deal with PayPal.

    Some better information in the story would have been nice. As it was, I clicked the link to OreillyNet, which had a link to SourceForge's forums, where I had to read an entire post and then locate a link to SourceForge's Terms of Use, which then directed me to yet another page describing the Donations Terms of Use.

    A lot of digging to find info about this new feature. You'd think, being a VA entity, that Slashdot would have spiced the story up with a few more relevant links!

    --
    "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
    1. Re:OK, I'm an idiot by zurab · · Score: 5, Informative

      And yet you haven't found the correct part. The site documentation about donations explains how much will be deducted from each transaction:

      PayPal deducts from each transaction a service fee in accordance with their policies; this fee may vary depending on currency conversion and other factors. SourceForge.net also assesses a separate service fee. As of 2003-12-01, the SourceForge.net fee is 5% of the donation, with a $1 minimum.

      So, SF fee is separate from PayPal's fee and is charged on top of that; and has a minimum of $1. With bunch of small donations $5 to $10 from each contributor, the SF fee alone will be in the whopping 10%-20% range.

    2. Re:OK, I'm an idiot by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 2, Informative

      "So, SF fee is separate from PayPal's fee and is charged on top of that; and has a minimum of $1. With bunch of small donations $5 to $10 from each contributor, the SF fee alone will be in the whopping 10%-20% range."

      Perhaps we should point out that the cheapest way to receive donations is still to publish an address, work address, or P.O. box number. (If you think addresses should be private, have a look at your WHOIS listing sometime)

      You can then mail cash as a donation, and it'll cost a few tens of cents for postage, and it works worldwide. You can buy money in the recipient's currency at your post office, or if you're in the same country, write a cheque.

      Just don't tell the postman you're mailing cash.

      If you need to transfer a large amount, you can publish a bank account number, and people can transfer money directly to that account. The cost of that would be about $10, but for large amounts of money, you really want to trust a bank, instead of someone [PayPal] which looks like a bank, acts like a bank, but has a history of cheating, a ridiculous ToS/privacy policy, and absolutely no regulatory oversight.

  9. support? by kautilya · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Umm..I can see the next step. You can opt-in for some sort of subscription through with you can get "support" through email by code maintainers.

  10. Paypal.com may be a bad idea by caca · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am not sure how many of you are aware of numerous reports of paypal.com being a somewhat questionable company. While I have not had them cause me any trouble personally, I thought it worth mentioning. It seems some people have had paypal.com hold up in excess of $5000.00, to either get it back in a year, or not at all. If you read the forums, you get a real good idea about how horrible they really are, with ex-employees telling some very interesting stories. If any of this is true, I would hate to see SourceForge caught in the middle of something that could hurt them or its users.

    1. Re:Paypal.com may be a bad idea by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 3, Informative

      "If any of this is true, I would hate to see SourceForge caught in the middle of something that could hurt them or its users."

      SourceForge mention that their system is a good way to donate money to organisations such as the EFF.

      It's worth noting however, that both the Free Software Foundation, and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation accept credit cards directly, without any sort of intermediary.

      As for Debian, there's the Software in the Public Interest site, which is setup to handle donations to Debian, or to other Free Software projects.

      If you have more time than money, consider the Help Wanted pages at SourceForge and Savannah (currently unavailable)

  11. It would be interesting by chevelleSS · · Score: 5, Interesting

    to see a project allow those who donate to vote on what the money went towards.

    I would have to vote for Perl/Python modules for GNU cash.

    1. Re:It would be interesting by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Why would I want money donated for my help to go to either the FSF or the EFF? Both organizations employ people who say things publicly that make them look like complete idiots."

      You haven't given money to the US government have you?

  12. 0wn3d. by Knights+who+say+'INT · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While its nice that they always _mention_ there's a corporate slant in giving space to Sourceforge stories, it's still a bit disturbing that a whole community is serving the interests of the likes of VA - not to mention IBM, Novell, and whatever big company becomes Linux/GNU/Open Source vendors.

    Nah, I don't really know if there's a solution. While the compromise seems to be working okay (at least in the server market), for how long will be people willing to work for free for IBM?

    How much is hacker reputation really worth?

    1. Re:0wn3d. by Queuetue · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't (and I don't think any OSS developers) "work free for IBM."

      I give back to the Linux kernel, mozilla, apache and other projects not because I wish to get "kewl hacker cred" but because these are tools that affect my daily life, and I get paid by my clients for the time I spend improving them.

      So does IBM. When you say things like "work free for IBM," you ignore the fact that in the exact same sense, IBM is also "working free for me".

      We're all working to improve the technical commons, most of us are getting paid, and everyone gets more technology out of it.

    2. Re:0wn3d. by Queuetue · · Score: 2, Insightful
      How much is IBM really giving you in this whole open source business?
      Exactly how much they are required to: An amount between zero and infinity, inclusive.

      Why do you think that IBM, or Hypocrite computers, for that matter, benefitting from work I was paid to produce hurts me in any way? There is also the mechanism for them to return the favor, but certainly not the requirement. Eventually (or at least statistically), they will need to fix something to work their way - Porting JFS, for instance. When they do that, and they follow the rules as the GPL lays them out, they benefit me, and a million others like me.

      When I do something like fix an overflow oops in tty code, or find some dangling pointer deep in the bowels of some driver that only 50 people besides me care about, I help this community. I spend 5 minutes, and hundreds of people's lives are improved, including many who work for IBM.

      If you wish to view OSS development from the perspective of a greedy person, then there is nothing here for you - there is no way, by design, to use the GPL to leverage money from a large organization.

      If you, like me, work on OSS to pay your own bills, provide an outlet to challenge yourself, improve the technology you live with, and enjoy helping others in a cooperative community, then there's lots here for you.
    3. Re:0wn3d. by Queuetue · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, actually, there is no marginal cost to me. My point, which I think you ignored, was that it costs me nothing for someone else to benefit from my work. It only costs those who commission me to produce further work - those with the greatest need, the furthest vision, or a sense of philanthropy.

      For those that simply take my work and use it for whatever purpose they choose, I don't know what it may cost them - It doesn't matter, from my perspective.

      If you feel gentoo is "done" then of course you wouldn't need to hire people to work on it before you released it. I don't fully understand your point. If I find tasty mushrooms in my backyard, I can certainly sell them for a profit, even though I didn't create them ... as long as people don't acquire the skills to pick their own. If I want to add value, I may have to hire a cook, people to package, and supplies.

      People do respond to incentives - how does this argue with anything I'm saying. My paycheck is my incentive - I get paid to write software, not to keep people from using it. If someday, all the software is "done" - ie, everything that will ever need to be written is written and running perfectly - then yes, I'll be out of a job.

      Obviously. Like the buggy-whip manufacturers.

      But the complaints that IBM should not be allowed to enjoy the same rights as a smaller company, or an individual wrt the use of software... Why not? If I feel exploited, I'll stop making free software. But as long as I give my IP liberty, I'm certainly not going to complain when it enjoys the freedom of use that that liberty provides it.

      It's actually very simple, but can be made more complex if someone wants to misunderstand.

    4. Re:0wn3d. by HiThere · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What bothers me is PayPal. I've heard stories disturbing enough that I'm NOT going to sign up for a PayPal account. Not even for a good cause.

      I don't know that the stories are true, but I see no way to prove that they AREN'T true. Not until there is federal level law that states that PayPal is subject to standard fiduciary responsibility laws.

      (If you want, I'll grant that that isn't much proctection. But appearantly currently the only protection is backlash in the press...you know, the press that thinks that SCO is a good guy.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    5. Re:0wn3d. by Queuetue · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If I code up a great game engine, and someone else makes $20 million using my engine, and I gave it away free, then I'm out a substantial amount of money.

      No. Again, it costs you nothing for someone else to benefit from your work.

      It may have cost you something to build the work - I'm not arguing that point. But it cost you nothing to give it away.

      But, if, for instance, you and 15 other game developers chipped in a fraction of your 20 million to build an even better free game engine (release the code, not the content), then you'd all be far ahead.

      If 200 other companies started to use your engine, and none of them gave back, you're still ahead. If the entire industry standardized on that engine? You're still ahead, because you got a better product, for much less than your planned cost.

      Did you collect money from those other companies? No, but you are better off just the same - why do you need to?

      Greed is killing us.
  13. "non-profits that support Open Source" by twener · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Project admins can decide if they want to give a portion of their proceeds to non-profits that support Open Source, such as the Open Source Initiative, Python, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Gnome Foundation, etc."

    Does anyone has a complete list? Does it include KDE e.V. too?

    1. Re:"non-profits that support Open Source" by AsparagusChallenge · · Score: 3, Informative

      From admin->donate, on the project page:

      Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
      Apache Foundation
      Open Source Initiative (OSI)
      Gnome Foundation
      KDE.ORG
      The Python Software Foundation
      SourceForge.net

      And one can set a percentage between 5% and 100%

  14. About Time by mr_lithic · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I have implemented a lot of Open Source software at work and I often feel that I would like to give something back to the people who have created it.

    Often the open-source stuff is better supported, more stable and has better features than the commercial software that it replaced. Two examples of this are VNC and Liberum (both SourceForge hosted projects).

    VNC works much better for us than other commercial software and Liberum has completely replaced all of other helpdesk software due to its easy web interface and no need for a client install. A support person can clear a call while sitting on the desk of the person whose box they have just fixed.

    If we gave even a percentage of the money that we saved due to these two products, it would run in the thousands of pounds.

    1. Re:About Time by subverse02 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Why do so many think this will 'sully the waters' of open source?

      As far as I can see, many OSS developers have philosophical attractions to the concept of free and open software, but why should this stand in the way of them making a buck or two?

      Yeah, sure, VA Systems and Paypal are commercial entities, but what's wrong with that? What are all the OSS developers' day jobs? (Or where do their parents work?) I mean, you gotta put food on the table. And hopefully a new dual G5 once you've got the food covered! :)

  15. Still the best (Re:Paypal.com may be a bad idea) by Rick+Richardson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I checked around a couple of years ago, Paypal had the lowest transaction fee of any of the places that mere mortals can use for processing credit cards.

    I've accepted a hundred or so payments thru PayPal; not one person I've dealt with had a bad experience and told me about it. A couple of people emailed me and said they did not have PayPal accounts and weren't going to get them because they "heard that PayPal is evil incarnate...". So they mailed me a check.

    If you ask me, these people are being silly. They just sent a person they do not know (me), who is in another state or country, their checking account number. Thats like having unprotected sex. Oops I forgot this is slashdot and some of you may be unfamiliar with what that is - think of it as taking on a battle cruiser with your shields down.

    There is nothing wrong with being a little careful with online payment systems. For example, I've tied my PayPal account to a throwaway checking account and credit card, not my main account and card. So if something does go wrong I can still make the mortgage payment at the end of the month while I get the snafu cleared up (no snafus yet). And when I get deposits into my PayPal account I immediately withdraw them into the checking account. It costs nothing to request withdrawal of funds.

  16. paypal fee 32 times higher than e-gold! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    paypal fee is 30 cents + 2.9%??

    for a dollar donation that sucks!!!

    e-gold charges 1% capped at 50cents.
    so a dollar donation is a penny fee.

    32X more fees for 1 dollar donation when using
    paypal instead of e-gold!

    mozilla foundation accepts e-gold.

  17. Dude, you have no frickin' clue by whatthef*ck · · Score: 2
    While its nice that they always _mention_ there's a corporate slant in giving space to Sourceforge stories, it's still a bit disturbing that a whole community is serving the interests of the likes of VA - not to mention IBM, Novell, and whatever big company becomes Linux/GNU/Open Source vendors.
    Dude, you have no frickin' clue how much VA Software, via Sourceforge, has done for the open source community. Even if they are making a profit through donations and banner adds--and I fervently hope they are, so they can stick around--the service they provide, for free, to open source projects is amazing.

    <plug>BTW, check out my project on Sourceforge.</plug>

  18. SourceSupport.org does this better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been working on a project that is listed over at Source Support where they take it one step futher, The don't give the money to the developers until the project is completed.

    Here is a clip from their FAQ...

    1. What is SourceSupport.org?
    SourceSupport.org provides a system to pay programmers, artists, content creators and just about anyone that can provide a solution to challenges submitted by users. For example, let's say that there is a large group of people out there that want 'Program X' ported over to 'Operating System Y'. First, someone submits the challenge on SourceSupport.org. Others who see the challenge and are willing to donate for the cause can submit any amount they want with the hope that the added funds will persuade someone to come along and take on the challenge. Hopefully the challenge will be met and it becomes a win-win situation for both the donors and the person/team that completed the challenge. The donors get 'Program X' running on 'Operating System Y' and those who completed the challenge get paid. Finally a good way for a Open Source programmer make some cash for their efforts.

  19. Wishlists & Bounties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Now if SF could just add a system for people to put up wishlists (projects or apps they would like to have available) probably with some optional bounty ("I'll pay X for app A"), that would be something...

    C U!

    Mario Valente

  20. The Opportunists' Antennae just went up by smagruder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, I hope that Sourceforge can handle the big burst of new requests for projects to be setup. They're gonna be busy for a while separating the rare wheat from all that chaff that's gonna hit them.

    --
    Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
  21. Serviceware by droleary · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think I would mind having non-encumbered, free redistribution, free modification, full source available shareware. If it can still be called that way :)

    You should call it Serviceware, since you're essentially supporting the concept of software development as a service instead of a product. Some companies (plug, plug) already release software like that.