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How Can I Donate Old Hardware to Developers?

Posted by Cliff on from the forlorn-hardware-seeks-good-home dept.

olddoc asks: "I have a computer I'd like to get rid of. It is still pretty useful for a developer, being a fairly powerful dual Athlon MP box, but there is no Microsoft OS on it so most charities in the area don't want it. I live in Eastern Pennsylvania, USA and I'm sure there are dozens of people who are developing GPL or BSD licensed software, who would be happy to get their hands on it. If my old computer is used to help develop free software, I'll get all warm and fuzzy inside. If I get a tax deduction for it so much the better. Does anyone know how to give a worthy project a hardware gift?"

6 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. LUG's by runswithd6s · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Find the email address to a local LUG listserv and let them know the stats of the machine and that it's free!

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    assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
  2. Doesn't the East Coast have FreeGeek Yet? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Or is it only an Oregon Phenomenon? http://www.freegeek.org/, for anybody in the Portland Metro

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    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  3. Bona fide non-profit by Australopithegeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't say that I'm going to be doing a whole lot of developing, but I run a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and I can use anything I can get my hands on. I have an intranet and portal to set up and several small database apps to write.

    Even though they make things fairly reasonable price-wise, there will be no Microsoft software in our organization. Everything is GPL F/OSS.

    We rehabilitate raptors (birds of prey, not dinosaurs) and do conservation education outreach.

    I can give you a nice, muchly grateful letter to pass along to the IRS....

  4. Ebay by lathama · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ebay it cheap and donate the Proceeds...

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    The GPL, for those that truely understand.
  5. Donating hardware is too much of a hassle by cerberusss · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Why don't you put the thing on eBay, selling for the highest bidder. Then find your favourite project on sourceforge and donate via Paypal?

    I'm a developer and I often use Meld, a diff/merge tool. I also am an avid vim user. So every now and then I donate a few bucks to these worthy projects.

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    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
  6. It usually is pretty simple... by wolf31o2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Gentoo, for one, takes hardware donations. The donated hardware could become any number of things, from a new bittorrent server, to a developer's workstation. Another thing we offer is online developer machines, which gives remote access to the machines for developers in need. I am sure that Gentoo is not the only project out there with a similar way of handling donations. I know that FreeBSD has their own donations page. Pretty much any community-based project will gladly take your donation and put it to good use. In fact, it might be easier to find a project you would like to donate it to, rather than an individual. The project would probably do a better job of finding your machine a good home within its own structure than you probably would be able to without being intimately familiar with who does what and who needs what within the project.