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A New Year's Idea: Pay For Some Freedom
from the non-denominational-means-they-take-any-size-bill dept.
As you may have read the other day, the FreeBSD project is now taking donations via PayPal. And if you're in a clean, roots-UNIX kind of mood, the folks at OpenBSD and NetBSD (NetBSD PayPal) would probably also appreciate your goodwill, not to mention your money, hardware and time.
If you don't have a specific project in mind, but would like to donate some of your chunk of the time-money continuum to a worthy software undertaking, a good place to start is Software in the Public Interest. They can take both general donations as well as earmark for projects they support, like Berlin, Debian, GNOME and more. (Not into GNOME? KDE could use some assistance, including money, too.)
If you like the projects funded by the boxed-distribution makers (like paying for full-time work on endeavors like KOffice), you can do more than buy the box: Mandrake has recently formed something called the Mandrake Club as a gathering place for both people and funds.
To encourage (and reward) cross-platform goodness, supporting the Mozilla project is hard to beat. (This story was posted using a 9.7 build using the wonderful Modern theme.) Source of Mozilla wisdom Mozillazine could use some help paying for the switch to a new host, and to defray ongoing costs. Another good place to cast your perls is Yet Another Foundation, which supports the somewhat scrutable development of the not-so-scrutable Perl.
More generally, consider investing some money in organizations like the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), all of which help battle (in court and in the marketplace of ideas) the forces who wish to monitor and otherwise exert top-down control of your computer and everything to do with your on-line life.
Remember, with all of these projects, non-monetary contributions are welcomed as well -- if you can write or correct some online documentation, create test-cases to root out weaknesses, or create some pretty graphics to smooth the user experience, you can contribute. (Long-distance pizza deliveries to developers are also generally appreciated.) Teaching a coworker, classmate, parent or friend how to set up mailfilters on a Linux box, or how to edit photos in the GIMP, is a nice way to save them money, too. Making a difference locally might also mean contributing some time, money or hardware to help run local LUG events.
Note: Many of the organizations named above are set up as 501(c) charities; if you'd like to claim any charitable contributions as tax deductions, now's the time to get the postmark, at least if it's important to you for those donations to be on the current calendar year. For a few more ideas on ways to donate geekily this year, see Jack Bryar's Newsforge column with some more links.
And a Happy New Year's!
I wonder if... (Score:3, Funny)
Open Source Business Model (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Open Source Business Model (Score:4, Interesting)
To wit, we need a system that does two things:
a) provides a database backend that supports end-users in "discovering" things that they like. In the music application, it would help users explore genres and discover artists. In the OS application, it would help users locate a solution to their problem and ensure they get all the little bits required for that solution.
b) provides a micropayment system that is so inexpensive and so easy to use that there's no particular benefit to be gained by pirating. In the music application, I imagine it would price songs at substantially less than a buck a track, but would forward payment to the artist only when the cumulative sales make doing so worth-while. In the OS application, it would be much the same.
There is no technical reason for a micropayment (or very small payment, if they're not exactly micro) system to work. The only hurdle at this point is the ludicrous surcharges involved in handling small transactions. This hurdle is the fault of profiteering credit card companies, banks, and yahoos who figure that they deserve to get a six-figure income simply because they make it possible to pay artists/programmers directly.
The database solution is the bigger problem. User-referral works to some extent, but it's not great; see Amazon for examples. Genre-labelling is very useful, but classifying music into genres is difficult. And so on.
With OS it's probably easier; it shouldn't be too difficult to create the database content that will help people find what they need, and that ensures they download all the components they need.
Anyway, bottom line of what I'm saying here is that the solution isn't stymied for technical reasons, but for greedy reasons. If someone can solve the greed problem -- ie. ensure that most of the money goes to the people who did the music/programming -- then I think we'll finally see a day when independent artists/programmers can make a living without having to go commercial.
My one disagreement (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no piracy in Open Source. I know you know that, but it's an important point.
The idea I had was to set up a site where people who want features or functionality added to some piece of open source software could post their requests along with a "bid" which would be held in escrow (in interest-bearing accounts) for whoever fulfilled the requirements. Requestors could pool their bids to make it more worthwhile for whoever decided to take up the project. Ideally, the site would be able to cover costs using the interest earned on the bids.
Obviously, this idea could be expanded to include links to many OSS projects and (ideally) their dependencies in an easily searched/browsed format. Sort of a one-stop OSS deal.
Anyway, that's the skeleton of my idea. Unfortunately I don't have the time or resources to do it myself. If anyone's interested, the email address above is valid. According to SBC I can get 6M DSL at my residence, so I can provide a physical location (assuming they'd allow hosting, although I honestly can't think what else I would do with all that bandwidth).
Re:Open Source Business Model (Score:4, Insightful)
donations -- of time. Most open source
software isn't run by a company, it's run by a
community. Donating money is just a different
way of participating in those communities.
Re:Amazon donations? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason micropayments aren't working is greed. Yahoo's 2.5% is pretty reasonable; it's the extra thirty cents that kills the whole micropayment mechanism.
We need someone with deep pockets to come along and make his money not through direct charges, but through savvy money management.
Charge a 2% transaction charge, sure. That's a penny on every fifty-cent transaction. That's cool.
Next, don't transfer the money to the recipient for each and every charge. Only transfer the money when it's worth transferring
In other words, until your work collects a thousand bucks worth of payment, you don't get a dime. At the other end of the scale, if you're churning ten thousand a day, you don't get a penny until the end of the month.
The middleman is going to make his money by investing that money. A nice, safe fixed-income bond pays 2.5 to 3% these days. If you can get billion dollars of transactions sequestered away at those rates, you're going to make $20M in transaction charges + $30M in interest = a fifty million dollar business.
Now, granted, that's not a very good return on investment. But the point here isn't to get rich: it's to enable a revolutionary economy. The person who does this is going to have to be the kind of super-wealthy fellow who doesn't have a need to make piles of money. He's going to have to be the kind of guy who wants to make a big mark in history.
Micropayments will work, if we can find someone who will allow them to work for the benefit of the artists/programmers/creators. It'll never work if the middle-man is greedy.
Re:Amazon donations? (Score:4, Interesting)
A T1 goes for what, $900/mo? Electricity, lease payments, repairs, etc., all add up to some monthly expense. The transaction costs could easily be in the $1.00 to $3.00 range per CD distributed. And, of course, you load Yahoo!s $0.30 into the front end amount, ending up with about $1.30 to $3.30 per ISO image. It covers the Yahoo! expense, and it may even be enough to keep FreeBSD afloat.
Oh, and the problem with your lump-sum solution above is that Visa will want transaction fees on every donor to middleman transaction as well as on every middleman to recipient transaction. So, your middleman organization has to make sure that they hold on to the user's account long enough to get a whole lump amount from each credit card. It might be a better solution to have a web counter at the destination site that you register with; one that promises not to withdraw money until the user uses more than $X worth of services (or maybe monthly, whichever comes first.) And that comes with its own raft of fraud issues, too, but that's not a huge deal for a mostly voluntary payment scheme...
The biggest thing is I don't want any volunteer organization collecting my Visa info. Just look at the attack tree! You have volunteer groups holding either Visa account information or tokens that are worth lots of cash; you have a payment website to secure and insure; and you still have to pay Visa lots of money to play. It'd take a bank's worth of money just to create a middleman site like this. FreeBSD may do better just to issue their own Visa cards.
Sorry, but I just think the financial risks involved to everyone concerned in the middleman scheme would pretty much prevent it from taking off.
John
Re:Amazon donations? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also neglected to mention a further money-making part of this venture: the payee's money pool.
In my part of the world, banks generally waive the transaction/account fees if you have $1000 (sometimes $5000) in the account at all times during the month. Dip below, and they nail you. Keep it above, and they pay you a pittance in interest.
For the micro/small payment system to work, the middleman will need to set a deposit boundry. I think it should be $50. If you dip below $50, a surcharge is going to be applied to your transactions... perhaps an extra dollar charge, in addition to the payment you've made. It'll provide hefty incentive to keep a good bit of money in the account.
I think most people will be comfortable with having about $100 floating in their account.
Thus, with a million subscribers, the middle-man will have an additional $100M to play with. That'll be another $3 million of investment profit.
Plus you can bet that at any given time, a few percent of the users will let their accounts go below $50, giving the middle-man yet more revenue.
There are also some value-added services that could be provided to the recipients of these payments. Many of the recipients are going to be a group of people: hardly ever is an artist or programmer working entirely alone. These groups are going to need to distribute their money to the members. Our middle-man can do that for a nominal fee. Shazam, more bucks come rolling in.
Again, I repeat: this is going to require a selfless super-rich "donor" who has grown past the need to make more money, and now wishes to do something that will revolutionize the way we transact business with creative individuals. It's got a lousy rate of return, in a strictly dollars-and-cents mindset... but it's got a fantastic return, in terms of revolutionizing how we reward the creative people in our society.
Transgaming (Score:4, Interesting)
a better place to put it.. (Score:3, Offtopic)
And don't forget Perlmonks (Score:5, Interesting)
You can also give to PerlMonks [perlmonks.org], using the appropriately named Offering Plate [perlmonks.org] (they use Paypal but you can also just send a check).
Free ways of helping... (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, the EFF, maybe! (Score:3, Interesting)
Buy a box set (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure you can download an iso and burn as many copies as you like, and sure you "don't need no stinking manual". But by buying retail version you are saying directly to the developers, publishers and retailers that you use their software and like it enough to buy a copy. (And you can write it off as business software purchases when you file your tax
Plus your box set is great for lending out to friends & newbies (much more impressive than your blank CD-R). Or put it beside your computer at work (and let anyone borrow it), to subtly promote Free Software without being an anti-M$ nazis about it.
If you belong to EFF (Score:5, Insightful)
So the EFF will be getting my fifty bucks, because I figure if free software gets made illegal, there won't be anybody left for the rest of you to donate to.
Do you use PROPAGANDA wallpaper? (Score:4, Informative)
Like my stuff? Sure, its free -- but rent isn't.
Shamelessly begging for pocket change in the post-dot-com economy,
Don't forget Freenet (Score:5, Informative)
Trying hard to understand this (Score:4, Insightful)
But more intriguing is the suggested solution. So there are various funds I can contribute to that will renumerate some or all of the people working on free software. That's interesting but surely it has a fatal flaw.
By pooling donations to be split amongst projects you are diminishing a lot of the power of your money. When I pay for a software package I am saying that I want this software package, not one of the many alternatives I could have bought. The one I chose may have features I want, it may have a better UI for me, it may be more reliable, it may be more compatible.
I vote with my money and that gives me a small but significant voice in which software gets the resources to continue to grow.
I don't want to give up this power. Software should conform to my needs as the end user. The market mechanism is an extremely good way for me to express my needs in a way that the software developers will take seriously.
This is a Good Thing [tm].
Why circumvent the market principle? Why disenfranchise users in this way?
Yes, I am advocating selling software to cover its cost of development, distribution and continued production. You know, like we've always done for software and pretty much all other goods and services. Yay for selling good software for a fair price.
Re:Trying hard to understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
I think everybody agrees with this. The disagreement revolves around what should be considered "fair". Is it fair to 'license' software to users, thereby depriving them of rights that consumers who purchase other products expect to have? Is it fair for monopolists to leverage their power to screw consumers into perpetually upgrading to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world? Is it fair for the U.S. Patent Office to pick winners and losers in the marketplace? Is it fair that de-facto proprietary standards compell people to use software with serious security flaws and innumerable other defects? Defects that they cannot fix themselves.
I agree with your sentiments completely, but I think the marketplace you refer to is badly broken. The competitive marketplace for software that you speak of exists, but not where you think it does.
There's no irony to speak of selling free software. The irony is that people are willing subsidize multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations to temporarily acquire limited rights to software that sucks.
Overhead expenses (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally don't donate to ANY organization unless the overhead expenses are clearly stated in their donation literature. On SPI's site for example, I can't find any record of how much of donations go to administration or how much the leaders of the organization are paid.
I think a lot of people would be shocked by how corrupt a lot of high-profile organizations are, and how small the percentage of donations go to the intended receivers. If SPI or any other organization has nothing to hide, then let them state the facts so I know I'm not getting ripped off.
Re:Overhead expenses (Score:4, Informative)
On SPI's site for example, I can't find any record of how much of donations go to administration or how much the leaders of the organization are paid.
You don't find any such information on SPI's site because at present there is no policy for paying SPI officers ("leaders") anything at all. There isn't even yet a formal policy for SPI charging member projects (such as Debian) anything either, not even domain registration fees when SPI personal take care of such things.
The current proposal is for SPI to charge member projects 5% of any funds deposited on a member project's behalf, and for the cost of any expenses accrued on a member project's behalf when SPI acts under the direction of that member project.
There are no plans to pay SPI officers any sort of salary, stipend, or other form of compensation. SPI officers and board members are volunteers.
I acknowledge this stuff should be up on the website. Once the SPI Board has voted on such a policy and made it official, it will be. Our next Board Meeting is scheduled for January 26th, and this subject is on the agenda.
Members of the Free Software community are invited to express their views on policies like this to the SPI Board of Directors. Just send mail to "board" at "spi-inc.org".
-- Branden Robinson, SPI Treasurer
We need a new system (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine, for instance, if instead of all these companies paying billions to Microsoft for Office, if just a few million was spent paying free software developers to make a comparable product instead. I would be willing to bet that the resulting product from the free software developers would be of better quality, despite the huge difference in the amount of money involved. The moral of the story? Free software developers could work just like normal programmers (high salaries and all), and develop public works for all to enjoy. There is no reason we shouldn't get paid.
Donations are a good first step, but it should not end there. I want big fat office buildings full of free software developers, maybe publically government funded (like the Artists and Painters of yore), or perhaps kick-started by a company with money. The money needs to come first, then the product. That's the only way it would work and make sense.
My perfect world:
- company A needs a product, so they contact the FSF or something.
- FSF solicits the concept to other companies that might be interested (company A could do this also, petition-style)
- All the companies pitch in money (up front) to the FSF to have the software developed.
- The finished product is put in a museum, where all can make copies.
As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no downside to this system, other than that the older companies selling software will get the shaft.
Another problem you might think of is that you have to wait for the software to be developed. This is no different than the current system in place. My hope is that this proposed system would be used for all software in the future, not just as counter-projects to MS software (would still be worthwhile though).
Hear Hear! (Score:5, Funny)
This is totally right. With Open Source, you get tons of incompatible versons of basically the same thing. With one corperate souce for your software, you will NEVER have this problem.
Considering office suites, with Open Source, you have Star Office, Applixware, KOffice, and many more to chose from. It's so confusing! and most of these are compatible, but not always 100% compatible. With Microsoft you only have a single one: Office XP, nothing else, it's easy!
...Oh, wait, I forgot, you also have Office 2000 still around...
...Um, hold on a second, some people are still using Office 97 and 95...
...Ah, and I forgot about those people using the various service packs and each of them, not to mention that some of those versions are "professional" editions and some are "home office" and "small buisness"...
And maybe some losers are still back in the stone ages with Windows 3.11, did that even HAVE office back then? But, BUT all of these office suites from Microsoft are 100% compatible. 100%! (in "save as text" mode)
... er
Re:We need a new system (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As a software engineer... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Software is not a zero-sum game. New software tends to increase the demand for new software. E.g., a cheap, good image editor would increase the demand for archiving and indexing software. The free software community in particular is most skilled at creating infrastructure and libraries that enable new applications. E.g., Linux + Apache + Perl + PostgresQL == the huge market for corporate web apps that did not exist 10 years ago.
2. If it was a zero-sum game, some people will be less able to adapt to the new market. Assuming you are clever and adaptable, free software would hurt your competitors more than it hurts you. Conversely, stupidity and inflexibility are not grounds for complaint.
Free software == not tying people's hands using copyright law.Free software != not needing any money.
Tax Deductions: Donate BEFORE Jan 1, 2002 (Score:5, Informative)
The best way to help. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free software isn't about getting something for free; it's about the freedom to modify programs to do what you want them to do, not what some arbitrary programmer in a distant company wants you to do. It's about freedom -- not about saving money (although that does appear to be a fringe benefit).
Even if you don't code, chances are you can get someone involved in the project to write something for you by taking care of something they need. Documentation is the first thing that comes to mind; many open-source projects are sadly lacking in this department, and a well-written manual is worth a mountain of coder time. You can also help to provide server space and/or bandwitdh for the project, or to donate hardware for the coders-in-question to use.
The point is that free software is a community effort; and if you aren't willing to be an equal participant of that community, you really don't have much of a say.
Re:The best way to help. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know some people would consider users making bug reports and feature requests to be participating and helping out. (Though of course not all of them have the sense to be respectful and appreciative when doing so.)
Yeah, there are people who whine and bitch and think everything should be handed to them on a silver plater. I'm sure most of them don't confine their whining to matters of software, free or otherwise.
Statements like yours, while I don't expect it was your intention make it sound like input of any kind from non programmers is unwelcome.
Really Giving to the Community (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Really Giving to the Community (Score:4, Informative)
1 - because it really is worth it, but also
2 - its damn hard to make it work without just buying the CD's. Theo copyrighted the ISO image of OpenBSD, and you can't find ISOs of it online legally. Sure, its a little bit of arm-twisting to get people to buy the CD, but it works! There is no reason other distros couldn't follow suit. GPL means you have to publish the code; it does not mean you have to provide bootable ISOs for everyone to download.
Ladies: date a geek tonight! (Score:4, Funny)
I fully expect to be flamed, moderated down, and generally discredited for this comment, but someone needs to say it, because it's important. Money? To heck with money. I have a job that pays for my food and housing and computer. I'll write free software whether you give me money or not. Money will not make a difference to me or make my New Year happier. Having a woman pay attention to me would.
The world is full of volunteers who work tirelessly to write free software, defend the public good in the copyright wars, and promote technical education for everyone, all without asking anything in return. A great many of these volunteers are frustrated, lonely, young heterosexual men. You aren't a techie, but you want to help? Wonderful. You can donate money, but it isn't what we really want. You can go write some documentation, but actually, that's a lie, because really you do have to be a techie in order for the results to be worthwhile. What can you do that's actually possible and would make a difference?
Go find someone who'll appreciate you, and let them know in a very personal way that you respect and admire what they do. Date a geek tonight.
The same logic can and should apply to geeks who aren't male heterosexuals, and nothing in this response should be taken to limit the application, blah, blah, blah, etc. That's not the point.
Don't forget Slackware... (Score:5, Interesting)
Patrick has been doing a wonderful work during the last years and why not help him keeping one of the first (and IMHO best) Linux Distributions up and running?
cu,
Lispy
You can buy a reiserfs service contract (Score:5, Informative)
A way to help developpers... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to help developpers, write to the company they are working for and tell that you enjoy the software. PHBs will be happy ("ah? some potential customer? He heard about us in a tiny piece of software that one of our employees is working on, on his spare time?) and maybe they will allow the developper to spend some time on the project during the regular job time...
The developper will be paid for his work, the PHB will be happy and users will get new versions of the product...
Really, as a developper, being granted to work on free software on my daily job time would be a dream. Right now, coding is only possible after 11pm and before 8am
Gimp & other Adobe competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Money collection is not the problem...Focus is. (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO if there were a strategy developed by a few people or even a few groups that looked at a global view--these are the software needs of our society, and we will develop A, B, and C because there are no (free / alternate) products currently available to meet these needs--it would show that at least there is some looking ahead. Instead we have a bunch of different organizations, pushing many different flavors of the same operating system, two entirely different windowing / gui systems, two different wordprocessor / spreadsheet / presentation solutions, and countless other efforts, some with narrow focus and others that seem to repeat what's already been tried because for some reason the new developer thinks they have a better idea / approach / design / open source licensing model.
It seems to me that we are hunting elephants with buckshot. One concentrated rifle shot between the eyes will take down the big guys, but buckshot will only make them angry!
Until such a group is formed to help organize and focus the efforts of open source / free software development, we will still have a bunch of small disorganized companies wanting money, a bunch of very talented people programming in their spare time better code than what Microsofties get paid quite well for, and a few behemoth companies setting the direction of the computing world as a whole, and making a ton of money to boot.
Important: Give stock instead of money (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are lucky enough to have stock that has gone up in value (particularly founder's stock that has in effect a near-zero basis) you can get a double tax deduction in many cases for donating it rather than money.
The reason is you get to deduct the full value of the stock as a charitable donation, and you never pay the capital gains tax on it you would have paid if you sold it.
You need to have had it for a year. Contact a tax advisor for the full scoop.
If you do more than a tiny amount of charitable giving you can also set up a donor-advised fund (there is probably one in your area, do a web search). There you give stock to the fund (double deduction) and then have it dole out money to your favourite charities as you like it.
My money would go to Ogg (Score:3, Interesting)
But if I had any money they would certainly be donated to the Xiph.org Foundation [vorbis.com]
Free Software is certainly a good thing, and a worthy cause, but open formats for exchange of ideas, thoughs and arts is even more important. Without it, me may end up in a situation where an Evil Corp[tm] can control what you can say.