Linux Credit Card Re-Launches

An anonymous reader writes "The all-new Linux Fund Visa Card launched on July 24th. The Linux Fund began in 1999, and lasted until Bank of America bought MBNA and canceled the program earlier this year. Before that time the fund had distributed $100,000 a year on average. US Bank has inked a new deal to resurrect the program with new features. Currently, the project is open to ideas for supporting well-loved and community-supported software that is underfunded. The current list of supported projects includes Debian, Wikipedia, FreeGeek, Freenode, and Blender."

Comments

Wikipedia?

[niceone]

I wonder why they picked Wikipedia? All the others seem pretty geeky low visibility things that would have trouble raising non-geek funds whereas Wikipedia is pretty widely known.

Re:Wikipedia?

[owlnation]

I wonder why they picked Wikipedia? All the others seem pretty geeky low visibility things that would have trouble raising non-geek funds whereas Wikipedia is pretty widely known.

Yes, this is very questionable. Particularly with the relentless controversies that pursue Wikipedia like a pack of hounds. And will continue to do so for a long time to come.

Also, while the wiki template is open, large parts of the content are very much not open in any true sense. You can very easily get your IP address banned if some Wikinazi disagrees with your opinion, no matter who knowledgeable or correct your opinion is. Entire countries have had their IP addresses banned. This in not in any way open by my definition.

In addition the relationship with Wikipedia and the for-profit Wikia is not as distinct as anyone claims.

There are a great many open source projects that really benefit the community. There are projects that are struggling and this funding would help them. Wikipedia is not one of them.

Wikipedia shouldn't be funded by anything other than advertising (especially since a significant percentage of its content is already advertising copy anyway), or by donations from those who are so inclined to spend their money that way. I'm sure political parties and NGOs would cough up something for ensuring their views continue to be "freely" expressed. Especially the right-wing ones.

Re:Wikipedia?

[Taxman415a]

It's pretty funny how comments bashing Wikipedia get modded up with such ease even when they have nothing insightful or informative to say. "You can very easily get your IP address banned if some Wikinazi disagrees with your opinion, no matter who knowledgeable or correct your opinion is." In addition to fulfilling Godwin's law for us, it's false. One actually has to work pretty hard and behave pretty poorly to get blocked and it's really easy to get unblocked unless you're misbehaving. It's really nearly impossible to get blocked just for disagreeing with people. Any admin that did that would get blocked themselves. The reality is you have to misbehave to get blocked.

"There are a great many open source projects that really benefit the community. There are projects that are struggling and this funding would help them. Wikipedia is not one of them." - Oh yes, Wikipedia just gets millions of hits per day because it's pure trash, thank you for letting us know that it doesn't help anyone. I do however agree there are lots of deserving projects out there and that's why this credit card program is a great idea. It lets people donate without giving up cash flow. Even if you carry no balance, merchants still pay in the range of 4% to the cc company for the service and part of that fee is what goes to this donation.

Re:But how do they select projects?

[RuBLed]

You could nominate

Re:But how do they select projects?

[fyngyrz]

I strongly suggest nomination of the Gimp; it both has enormous potential, and could stand a significant degree of improvement as compared to other graphics mangulators.

Several advantages

[iamdrscience]

Not only do you get to fund open source projects by using this credit card, but because it's a linux credit card, it's more secure, right? Personally, I'm holding out for the OpenBSD credit card, but this is a good start.

Re:Several advantages

[AskChopper]

Is it easy to switch from a regular card and get used to using this one though?!

I know how mine works and am too frightened to make the change!

Will it be compatible with my existing wallet or will I need to download a third party money clip?

Re:Several advantages

[RuBLed]

it's in your wallet.conf, edit it by 'sewdo'-ing and adjust the parameters as necessary.

Important Question

[DTemp]

Do well-educated geeks (the readership of this site), on average, make their credit card companies less money than the general public? I'm guessing yes.

Generally speaking, I think people on here pay off their cards and don't get their payments in late. There isn't really much of an incentive for a bank to cater to this crowd... I've had Bank of America credit cards for a couple years, put on around $50K worth of charges, and have paid $0.00 in fees. They don't like me. My parents were actually told that if they kept paying off their monthly bill in full (and thus not allowing any interest to be collected), that their card would be dropped.

But I admittedly don't know that much about the business model of a credit card issuer.

Re:Important Question

[QuantumG]

Generally speaking, I think people on here pay off their cards and don't get their payments in late. Uh huh.

Re:Important Question

[JohnFluxx]

DTemp,

    If you borrow $1000 from the bank, then the bank basically ends up $10,000 to spend.
    Check out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-905047436 2583451279

Re:Important Question

[asc99c]

Have a look at the cost to vendors of accepting card payments, and you'll probably change your mind about whether they like you. For typical small merchants, there is a 2.5% charge on the purchase cost which the vendor pays to the credit card company. Plenty of stores will pass this directly on to the customer, especially price-sensitive online shops. No doubt the Wal-Marts are only paying closer to 0.5% due to their purchasing power, but it's still quite a bit of money.

For your $50K of charges, your credit card company will have been paid ~ $1000 in fees. The breakdown of that between all the companies involved (Bank Of America, Visa or Mastercard etc) I'm not so sure of. Unless you're constantly ringing up customer services it's fairly certain they will be making a nice profit from your custom.

Why trust them?

[NovaX]

They don't explain why, as a previous card holder, I should go back. I held the original card from 1999 (my first card, when leaving for college) until a few weeks ago when my replacement (non-branded version) came. The only difference I see so far is a less attractive card and that they switched from MBNA (now BoA) to US Bank for the United States. Since they failed for years to actually donate the funds contributed, the most satasfaction I got out of the card was when a waitress would complement that it was cute.

On their website, they gloss over the past and don't offer a reason why I should trust them again. I'm inclined to believe that new management will help ensure proactive measures are taken, but I'm also tempted to go reward some other charity.

Sound good for lunch meeting with microsoft rep.

[Bearhouse]

Bottle of wine, $25
Lunch for two, $86
Face on microserf's face when you whip out linux card to pay....priceless

Re:But how do they select projects?

[somersault]

It's difficult to contribute to him though, as he's chained up in a basement somewhere. Katana wielding maniacs may be able to find and free him though.

I stoped using mine

[YGingras]

Because MBNA gives so much money to other causes that are detrimental to freedom or information.