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How Can I Donate Old Hardware to Developers?
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?"
Conctact some projects you deem worthy of recieving the box. Since shipping is impractical unless they feel like dropping the money, you should try to find someone in a reasonably close area (you mentioned Peensylvania, shoudn't be a big prob) that would be willing to pick it up. I know I wouldn't mind a few hours of drive time for a box, especially something like yours that isnt a piece of junk.
Find the email address to a local LUG listserv and let them know the stats of the machine and that it's free!
assert(expired(knowledge));
You can jsut send it to me.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Or is it only an Oregon Phenomenon? http://www.freegeek.org/, for anybody in the Portland Metro
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
there's one for Philly.
Who's your user, program?
Freecycle.org, i think.
And they accept donated hardware. FreeBSD is one:
http://www.freebsd.org/donations/
You can get a tax deductionn too.
Go to KDE-Artists and see if there is anyone there that might need it.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
The hardest part won't be giving it away. The hardest part will be finding someone that will actually put it to good use. I mean, if you just take every request at face value, a lot of them are probably just nobodies who want a free SMP system. (I know this, because I pondered the same thing for a nanosecond or two.)
What you ought to do is find an active open source project where developer access to an SMP system would be useful. Good candidates are the Linux kernel and the BSD's, as well as number-crunching, desktop environments, and multimedia applications. Perferably it should be a project who's work you admire or use on a daily basis. Join their mailing list, lurk for awhile, and try to figure out who's who. Then post your offer to one of their mailing lists. Then and only then, offer your system to someone who you know to be a proven member of the community that has contributed a significant amount of code in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future.
This is probably the best way to ensure that your gift ends up in the right hands.
Id try posting an article on Ask Slashdot, and announce which city I live in, and then read the comments for people who would pick it up.
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....
Ebay it cheap and donate the Proceeds...
The GPL, for those that truely understand.
If I were you then I would contact Theo to see how you can get the box to a developer. By the way, no matter who you end up donating it to, it's an awesome gesture on your part. Good on ya.
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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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.