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Linux Fund Loses MasterCard Funding Source
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.
You can stop laughing now.
Fry tries to make a purchase in the future:
"Here's my Visa Card."
"Visa hasn't existed in over 400 years."
"Well, how about my MasterCard?"
"MasterCard hasn't existed in over 500 years."
"I have my Discover card."
(Pause) "Ooh, I'm sorry, we don't take Discover."
In my experience, MBNA / Bank of America have not been that great for credit cards. I used to get a ton of crap from MBNA, and I can be pretty sure those people have infested BoA's credit division.
My best suggestion would be to work with HSBC. A properly set up programme with them would possibly enable same/similar card services globally. I've had no problems with HSBC's customer service, aside from the occasional glitch in a VoIP connection to a call centre.
Otherwise, I've had pretty good experience with GE Money Bank and Citibank (as far as credit cards go). Chase, though, I avoid like the plague. So, if LinuxFund gets a Chase card, well, forget me then.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
You are very naive if you think this. Linux got to the point it is today because of the push by big money for Linux. Novell, Red Hat, and IBM have all been instrumental in pushing Linux to where it is today. If Red Hat and SuSE (now Novell) hadn't made viable commercial solutions for Linux, it would not have even competed with AIX, HP-UX and Solaris. IBM has been such a huge source for Linux that they even made their OS more compatible with it, when they introduced AIX 5L (guess what that 'L' stands for). AIX uses similar command syntax as Linux, it is also the only one of the three (AIX, HP-UX and Solaris) that I have seen provide RPM support. Many of the open source packages that have been ported to AIX can easily be installed using an RPM, instead of having to use the default AIX installation mechanism or re-compiling source yourself. All the ports for HP-UX and Solaris that I have seen, still use the OS default installation mechanisms, which are not always the most intuitive or friendly to use.
Honestly, I think a lot more Linux development and advancement has come from BIG money then it ever did from the volunteers. There are a good deal of contributions being made by people with a monetary interest in the success of Linux.
I always liked the old LinuxFund's mission of giving many small grants to many small projects. Are there any other similar organizations that do that sort of thing? Google Summer of Code comes to mind, but that is limited to college students. There's always the Paypal links on project homepages or Sourceforge, but I wish there was something more visible.
LinuxFund's current "give a constant source of funding to some projects" is nice too, and donating to the LinuxFund will hopefully remain a convenient way to donate to a number of individual projects.
I am currently a LinuxFund card holder, and was disappointed when Bank of America bought out MBNA. I'll be switching to the card my credit union offers very soon.
? 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.
I've had one of these for years. I work for Microsoft. It's mildly amusing to pay for stuff in the company store with the cards (though I probably wouldn't do that if Balmer or Gates was behind me in line, not that it's likely to happen...).
;-) )
(posting anonymoosely because, yes, I'm a coward...
Deleted
Perhaps it's time more OSS users show their appreciation by making donations. I definitely need to do this more. I imagine more generous donors also gain some clout for getting obscure bugs fixed or niche features added...
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
I too got one of these letters, and was disappointed that the Linux Fund program was dropped and converted to their lame "World Points" card. I've had 2 specialty cards that were previously MBNA (AOPA and Linux Fund), and both were changed somewhat with the BofA purchase. The AOPA card went from FBO rebates to double points @ FBO's, and now Linux Fund Card isn't supporting Linux and other F/OSS projects. Fortunately, for now, I still enjoy a 7.9% rate on the card which is the only reason I haven't canceled it (that and I enjoy the occasional remark on the Penguin logo on the card). When the card expires, I'll probably cancel it as there's no additional benefit and I hate the idea of letting BofA make money off of me.
If (or I should say when) BofA changes that single lasting benefit of having one of the lowest non-promotional non annual fee consumer credit card rates around, I'll drop the card. In the mean time, I too look forward to a new Linux Fund (or similar) branded CC from someone else, provided it has reasonable terms and rates.
$ man woman *
-bash:
Agreed, BofA sucks.
However I've checked into my Credit Union's branded cards (past and present), and they're generally outsourced to the big banks such as MBNA (erm, BofA), HSBC, Elan Financial Services, or others. Their rates are also generally less attractive than some other big bank offerings. For instance, those who got the Linux Fund card some time ago under MBNA at the fixed 7.9% APR are less likely to switch to a variable 12.44%-17.99% card unless 4.5-10% of that interest is going to Linux Fund.
$ man woman *
-bash:
Chase had a nasty habit of counting early payments as late for the previous billing cycle.
--
im not sure that would even be remotely legal if a payment was tendered for that month ie starting with a current account
pay in april for april
pay in april for may
pay in may for june
should get you some sort of reward not an extra fee
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
In that case, I think you may be surprised by this.
Personal credit cards have nothing to do with commercial banking - it's a consumer banking function. Cards like this (known as "affinity cards") are expensive to maintain unless you have a large credit portfolio, which is why many smaller banks don't bother... Unless you have a customer base large enough to provide an economy of scale, it just doesn't make sense.
Banks need to pay for the costs of maintaining their credit portfolio. (Think of it: cards need to be embossed, statement rendering, overhead involved with complying with Visa/Mastercard bylaws, collections, etc., to say nothing of the cost of taking on risk that debtors might not pay them back.) Those costs are passed on to consumers through interest rates and fees.
At the end of the day, I'm sure this was a business decision. Banks don't have some secret agenda for/against open source - they really just care about providing service (at a profit) to customers. If the card stayed, they probably would've needed to raise interest rates/fees and everyone would still be screaming.
Crazy Cheap Domain Hosting!
Quote:
Here is the full list:
Yes I did read the article. Which is why I thought SydShamino would find it of interest. With respect to your perspective, of the confirmed contributors, the only group that exceeds the non paid contributed (volunteers) is Red Hat. That shows, that with the confirmed group, the volunteers are very significant. While I also agree that you cannot blindly lump the "unknowns" into the "none" group, I suspect that of the "unknowns" the largest percentage would go to the volunteers. This would, very likely, place the volunteer group above Red Hat, thus making them the largest contributing group instead of the second largest. Looking at the spread, 7.7% to a maximum of 35.7% is a significant portion. Finally, take a close look at your own post: ...but it still shows that a significant portion of the code we run is written by developers who are donating their time. I believe that says it all.
While I do not dispute this, one thing that needs to be remembered is that many of the people now being paid to work on Linux by Red Hat, IBM, et al, are the same people who worked on Linux for free for a long time and brought it to the point where those companies thought it worth paying people to work on it.
If you look at the percentage of code in Linux that was written by people now being paid to work on Linux but who were volunteers when they contributed it, a different picture might emerge. This doesn't discount wholesale contributions of code such as XFS by SGI or JFS by IBM, but without the work of volunteers, including those now being paid, Linux would simply not exist.
About 20 years ago I had an account with BofA and they didn't seem so bad. Around that time they jacked up their fees on everything and changed their terms so as to make it much more likely to collect those fees. I left them pretty quickly. Since then they have bought a number of financial institutions I was using. Every time they have changed the terms and thoroughly destroyed good companies. It has happened again with MBNA. I just closed two credit cards I had with them. I find it hard to believe that anyone stays with them. There are so many better options. Anyone who is still doing business with BofA, I encourage you to make the effort to get out Now. Trust me, you will be much happier.
-Dan
I'm sorry to hear that you've had a bad experience.
HSBC is not simply a British bank, no more than Citibank is an American bank. Both operate globally, and thus call centres may be located anywhere. Last time I checked, globally, collections people are often obnoxious and arrogant.
The way to get a corporation to stop calling is as follows (for future reference, and so you don't have to block numbers).
At this point, you now have sufficient documented ground for suing for harassment. Should a call happen again, contacting the headquarters of whatever company and notifying them that they have now entered into harassment and should consider that every time they contact hereafter is yet another instance and they are currently easily subject to a lawsuit, should end it. If not, go to court.
I work for a Fortune 500 company myself. The best part, in my experience, is the idiot who dials again and again, failing to understand that numbers were transposed. I have, on occasion, managed to look up the number for the person in question (realising that likelihood). When I get the right number, the calls stop, too.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.