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Who Should Help LinuxFund Distribute $126,155.29?
Roblimo writes "The LinuxFund Web site was down for several months, and the project has essentially been out of business since last year. But MBNA kept the LinuxFund MasterCard going, and kept depositing money in LinuxFund's account -- to the tune of $126,155.29 when NewsForge reporter Jay Lyman finally caught up with the current and former project leaders and found out what was going on -- namely nothing. So does anyone have an idea what to do with this money? Want to suggest an individual or group to take over LinuxFund and run it right?"
LinuxFund is a non-profit organization in the state of Oregon. Funds come from affinity cards LinuxFund has setup through MBNA. They get paid for signing you up as well as fraction (a very small fraction) of every dollar you spend using the card.
They were using these funds to provide grants to the free software community. They have had "interns" which work on individual open-source projects, but mostly they offered grants and microgrants to OSS developers who needed funding to work on a specific project. For example Software Suspend recieved some funding as well as XIPH.ORG. They've also sponsorsed community organizations such as CodeCon and the Southern California Linux Expo when they were first starting out.
According to public records they were bring in revenues between $100K to $200K per year at their high point. Its definately a viable model for funding open-source projects it just looks like its in need of volunteer support.