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New Funding For Free Software In The UK

Posted by timothy on from the money-is-good-stuff dept.

AFFS writes "A new free software grants fund is available to projects in the UK from money raised by the UK Free Software Network UKFSN.org, the free software ISP set up by Jason Clifford in 2003, and donations to UK's Association for Free Software AFFS. The grants are open to any free software project or related campaign, by both individuals and groups."

4 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Shareware by albalbo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's money for the act of developing the software, not for copying it. Shareware restricts you from sharing the software with your friend, that's not what the AFFS is interested in.

    --
    "Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
  2. Join UKFSN (ISP) to help the fund along by sepluv · · Score: 4, Informative
    FTR, if you sign up to the UKFSN as your ISP, all the profits will be donated to this AFFS fund.

    They're also a really good ISP and not any more expensive than other UK ISPs.

    --
    Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
    [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
  3. Re:WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I am the Jason Clifford who runs UKFSN.

    Many times I've seen worthwhile projects suffer because the primary, and often only, author of the software has to cease development in order to earn a decent living.

    There are also several areas where Free Software offerings are either pathetic or simply don't exist. This is usually because there is little interest among developers in writing such software. One of the aims I had in setting out to raise such funding is to provide an incentive for good developers to write such software to be released under a Free Software license.

    Don't forget that Free Software does have a cost. That cost may not be charged onto the users but the developers always have to pay it in terms of their time and resources. Increasingly they also have to worry about legal expenses as well.

    I assure you that UKFSN is not a scam. The accounts are published in an effort to ensure that this is clear.

  4. Re:Connection to UKLinux.net? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I was the person who set up uklinux.net but I didn't have any money so it was finances by Lance Davis and Brian Teeman. They were also the people who commercially distributed by Linux distro (Definite Linux which is very much defunct!) - that was a straight RH derivative with crypto and RAID drivers and other things that RH lacked at the time.

    If you want to know why I left uklinux and formed ukfsn see my personal webpage at www.jasonclifford.com

    Suffice to say that I left uklinux in April 2000 and have nothing to do with them.

    At the time I left uklinux I was not aware of a single penny of actual donation. Everything was about spending money to promote uklinux (and the associated for profit businesses). The benefits to free and open source projects were a side effect. I didn't much like that.

    The lack of accountability and the obvious lack of distribution of profits is what led me to form UKFSN and to publish the accounts.

    Don't take my word for it though. Look into things for yourself.

    Jason Clifford