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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?"
They could give the money back, but it would probably take days to locate individual donors. Because no one would get reimbursed for the time it takes to locate donors (if they can be found at all), the volunteers would essentially be working against the original intent for which the money was given.
Perhaps the money could be used to set up a trust for a scholarship fund. If the trust was set up properly, with the appropriate oversight, it could be a perpetual source of fund for students entering the computer science field.
Now who wants more computer scientists?
Anyone?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Oddly, neither the website or the news story goes into any detail of what LinuxFund *is*. i.e. I assume the money comes from special credit card programs, but the site doesn't seem to explain how it's used. Is the money put toward internal developers on the project or is it used to provide grant money to OSS projects? Can anyone fill in the details?
:-)
IHMO, the best organization for something like this is for LinuxFunds to be an administrative entity only. Proposals for Open Source software and funding requirements could then be submitted to the project for review and potential approval. Selected OSS projects would receive the funding they requested according to the payment schedule that was approved. This payment schedule would allow LinuxFunds to track the progress of a given project, and make adjustments as necessary. (Potentially even cutting off funding if the project is not viable.)
Such an organization would require only a few knowledgable employees to make the decisions and administrate the funds. With funds transfers being what they are today, much of the grunt work (transfer, accounting, etc.) could be done automatically. Since this is a publicly supported organization, it should publish a detailed accounting of its usage of the money.
To put things in perspective, the current funds of $126k work out to about 5,250 man hours of work at ~$24/hr (~$50,000/yr).
That's my thoughts anyway.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Uh, I volunteer to help distribute the money. Just deposit it in my PayPal account and I'll take care of the rest.
Let me start out with the obvious, how about the FSF? Maybe see if one of their lawyers could be a trustee?
~Rebecca
I hear Bill Gates needs some assistance with his open source initiatives.
So THAT'S where all the tenths of a penny in my company's accounting software have gone!
Boy it sucks to see how poorly this was run. :(
"Nothing has come out of these accounts for months, save about $250/mo auto deducted for telecommunications expenses," Collord wrote. "I went off payroll in June of 2004 when I stopped working full time on this project and haven't incurred any expenses since. I was paid a salary of I believe like $28k per year. I haven't read my LinuxFund email since about January I believe."
$28k/yr. $14/hr. I'd say that's about the quality level the fund
administration appears to have received.
"I'm certainly negligent," he said. "The short story is: the scale at which the business model seems to work is not commensurate with the overhead required to run a nonprofit well. Everyone that's been involved has been lackluster given the range of requisite skills -- technical and administrative and business development in total -- and ultimately burnt out."
Try hiring a good business person. I'll bet you won't even need him/her full-time. In fact, you might be able to get somebody from SCORE very cheaply. Get interns with a biz background. You don't
need geeks to administer the fund. You only need them to decide who gets what.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
That would buy 180 SCO licenses, with a few hundred dollars left over.
He already runs a successful business.
He's not afraid to make controversial decisions and stand behind them (something one is going to need when one decides to donate to Project X and not to Project Y).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Crow T. Trollbot
That type of money cannot buy much in the real world, but offer over 100 $1000 bounties for open source solutions that don't exist yet and we could see years of evolution get pumped into open source projects OVERNIGHT!
Hello Sir,
I have $126,155.29 of unused donations that I cannot access. Please give me your bank account number and all of your other personal information, and i will deposit the enitre amount in your account. Once it is received, all i ask is that you send me back 50%, leaving 50% for your troubles. Thanks.
PtPete
How about using it to resolve the OpenOffice.org/FSF/Java thing? Either pay developers to get the Java bits working in GCJ, or rewrite them in some other language?
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Seriously, give it to Google to add an extra 126K to the Open source funds they're funding.
You can reasonable expect that they will distribute it with ethics rather than dip into it in expenses. If you appointed any other (read poor/legal/accountancy) administrator you would risk it being eaten in expenses.
Personally, I'd like to see Linux date and time libraries improved. I'd like to be able to convert from arbitrary time zone to arbitrary time zone, down to the nano second from any reasonable year up to 99999 AD.
Go spend it on that, even Windows time libraries don't handle this correctly (they don't handle day light saving properly) and its something I miss for a server.
Come on people, keep up.
Oh and you can put my name instead of the CowboyNeal option.
Deleted
I see this all the time in my industry -- people want to spend one-time funds on ongoing projects. As soon as that money is spent, people start scrambling for sustainability and complain about inept business practices. If the $126K is spent with this in mind, I am sure it can do wonderful things. If it is spent on a plan that requires future funding, we could have some problems.
Money for people
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
I can't think of a better place, except perhaps the two developers of NeoOffice/J, one of whom is now having to take a break from development due to economic concerns...
pick a software component that the OSS doesn't have an alternative to, and buy it.
I have one of these MBNA LinuxFund MasterCards.
Through my dealings with MBNA, I've decided they're one of the smarmiest credit card companies one can do business with.
It started as a fixed-rate card at an excellent interest rate. (With a one-year 0% balance-transfer rate to boot.) After a year, they switched it to a variable-rate account. The rate was still good, so I decided to keep it.
Every two months after that, they would sneak in a change in terms to the account. They would print this on a small piece of paper and hide it in the multiple pieces of crap along with the statement selling other overpriced junk. Luckily, I've caught it each time. These change of terms documents would explain that they were changing the interest rate to something ridiculous. Each time I would call and complain and they would set things right again, leaving my account at its current APR.
You may be thinking, "oh your credit sucks" or "that's what you get for not paying them on time". If that were the case, I wouldn't be complaining. Not only am I not late paying them, I'm not late paying anyone else. My credit score is fantastic too.
Things changed when I bought my first house a few months back. I got another one of these stating they were raising my APR to prime plus 19.99%. That's mind-bogglingly high! When I called them about this one, they refused to keep it at my low rate. They claim my new mortgage has nothing to do with it, but were unable to provide any reason whatsoever for the increase.
Luckily, these enclosures allow you to reject the change in writing, keeping your old APR. I did that, and have since transferred the balance elsewhere.
I would like to see all of the money raised through this program to be returned to the card members according to how much they each contributed.
Actually, if you had two programmers working full-time on nothing more than using code validators to find bugs, then submitting patches to those bugs, you'd get a lot of work done in a year. Easily enough to justify the cost to any corporate backer. There are plenty of code validators out there, and the coders could simply target whatever package the validators showed as most in need at that time.
(Of course, in an ideal world, there'd be a kernel code freeze for a month. During that time, the US Government would spend a few billion on developers, who would fix the whole Linux kernel end-to-end, with near-to-zero bugs left at the end of that month. The process would then repeat for GCC, glibc, X11, Gnome and KDE, after which the national deficit would barely have budged, but software reliability would have skyrocketted.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
180 SCO licenses for that money...
At the going-out-of-business sale, that covers the 29 cents. Now what about the other $126,155?
Shouldn't the objective be to get the most bang for the buck? Why not hire 20 Indian programmers at $3/hr for a year instead of 2 Americans?
Dear Dr Obedience Oleweh
I am Mr Lyman from Linux Credit Card. Recently the business was closed due to an unfortunate incident, leaving 126,000 (ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX THOUSAND) US DOLLAR in the account.
I cannot get these funds to their ritghful owners as I am listed as the official company solicitor. Therefore I need a trusted associate with Western Union Credit transfer to do it for me.
If you do this small job for me you will be able to keep half (SIXTY-THREE THOUSAND) US DOLLAR in your bank account.
For your security I need to set up the right bank transfer in your name. Please send me your local bank detail in Lagos right away plus a Western Union Bank money transfer of 500.00 US DOLLAR to cover my costs. I cannot be seen to pay the costs myself you understand as it would appear on the accounts.
God be with you and peace my brother.
My Lyman
New York, USA.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.