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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));
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?
And they accept donated hardware. FreeBSD is one:
http://www.freebsd.org/donations/
You can get a tax deductionn too.
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.
Yes, OpenBSD is good for the whole free software at large.
They were the ones that convinced us all to ditch telnet, and they did so by providing a feasable alternative. They've worked hard to convince wireless vendors to open their firmware, and gotten results. They were also one of the first groups to switch to X.Org. I guess what I'm trying to say is they have very high principles.
Recently, Theo de Raadt won an award from the FSF for his work.
I can't think of a better group to give it to. Unfortuntely, though, donations to OpenBSD are not tax deductable.