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Linux Fund Loses MasterCard Funding Source

Posted by kdawson on from the bucks-for-tux dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Linux Fund was established in 1999 to provide grants to free and open source software projects from funds raised via a credit card featuring a picture of Tux, the Linux penguin. This credit card was offered through MBNA America Bank, which was purchased in 2006 by Bank of America. Last week, LinuxFund credit card holders received mail from Bank of America informing them that the LinuxFund card would be discontinued. Linux.com has a few details about the end of the credit card including statements from executive director David Mandel, assuring that the LinuxFund will look different but will continue. In the past, the LinuxFund provided one-time grants of $500-$1,000 USD to many projects including SDL, FilmGimp, Xiph.org Foundation, CrystalSpace, K12LTSP, and Kismet. The LinuxFund stagnated in 2003, and in 2005 it was revitalized by new leaders and by 2006 provided a stable $6,000 per year contribution to a number of larger projects including Wikipedia, Blender, Debian, Gentoo, and OpenSSH." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It does not matter that much... by SydShamino · · Score: 4, Informative

    ? I was under the impression that Linux got where it is today because companies like IBM, Novell, and Red Hat paid their employees to work on open source code, organizations like OSDN paid people like Linus Torvalds to manage and organize the material, funders like the Linux Fund and (recently) Google's Summer of Code provided grants for smaller developers, and, finally, some people contributed volunteer work.

    I certainly wouldn't want to criticize the work done by unpaid volunteers, but I would have to doubt that they now represent a "large" portion of the code in Linux, either in terms of lines in the kernal or features.

    --
    It doesn't hurt to be nice.
  2. Re:It does not matter that much... by Blnky · · Score: 3, Informative

    ? I was under the impression that Linux got where it is today because companies like IBM, Novell, and Red Hat paid their employees to work on open source code, organizations like OSDN paid people like Linus Torvalds to manage and organize the material, funders like the Linux Fund and (recently) Google's Summer of Code provided grants for smaller developers, and, finally, some people contributed volunteer work. I certainly wouldn't want to criticize the work done by unpaid volunteers, but I would have to doubt that they now represent a "large" portion of the code in Linux, either in terms of lines in the kernal or features.

    In that case, I think you may be surprised by this.

  3. Re:It does not matter that much... by RajivSLK · · Score: 4, Informative
    Did you read the article you linked to? Only 7.7% of contributions were from comfirmed volunteers...

    Quote: ..at least 65% of the code which went into 2.6.20 was created by people working for companies. If the entire "unknown" group turns out to be developers working on a volunteer basis - an unlikely result - then just over 1/3 of the 2.6.20 patch stream was written by volunteers. The real number will be lower, but it still shows that a significant portion of the code we run is written by developers who are donating their time.

    Here is the full list:

     

    Top changeset contributors by employer
    (Unknown) 1244 25.0%
    Red Hat 636 12.8%
    (None) 383 7.7%
    IBM 368 7.4%
    Novell 295 5.9%
    Linux Foundation 261 5.2%
    Intel 178 3.6%
    Oracle 126 2.5%
    Google 97 1.9%
    University of Aberdeen 79 1.6%
    HP 78 1.6%
    Qumranet 71 1.4%
    Nokia 67 1.3%
    SGI 64 1.3%
    Astaro 63 1.3%
    MIPS Technologies 61 1.2%
    SANPeople 53 1.1%
    Miracle Linux 43 0.9%
    MontaVista 41 0.8%
    Broadcom 39 0.8%