Do you want to help Gentoo financially?

TuxFriend · Apprentice Joined: 14 Aug 2002 Posts: 151

Please post here your view on how we can help Gentoo to get some real cash. By providing information here we can help Gentoo with building a good financial-structure. Thanks for your help.

TuxFriend

- Are you willing to pay for open source software?
- Do you want to help Gentoo financially?
- How would you (not) like to make a donation (credit card, deposit, etc.)
- How frequently would you like to make a donation (once, new release, monthly, etc.)
- Where do you live?
- If you have any other relevant questions for this poll please post them so other users can respond to it.

http://lists.gentoo.org/pipermail/gentoo-announce/2002-September/000201.html

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

slais-sysweb · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 221 Location: London

surak · Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2002 8:37 pm Post subject:

Well the problem at hand is a lack of income for Daniel Robbins and I don't think he can make a livable income off gentoo based on donations. He is a very talented idividual and I'm sure he'll find something. The problem with donations to gentoo and free software in general is there's so little money to go around in the first place. Aside from corporate sponsors and donations, most people can't afford to give that much, and I'm always worried that what money these people do get isn't enough. I think the best way to help with gentoo is not with monetary contributions but with things that will benefit the end result of the distro, like submitting ebuilds, bug reports, patches, fixes, offering support and the like.

cf25 · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 158

squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 4:43 am Post subject:

I am all for helping drobbins out but, being that I am a college student, and I have little or no cash (what I have goes to food for my appartment), I really wouldn't be able to afford any type of subscription service. I don't pay for software, I get it free from the school cause I bought my lappy from them thus anything I need for windows, they have to provide (usually thru a licence that requires me to be on their network, which is no biggy), or I get free stuff (beer / libre) thru the "Linux" effort.

I love Gentoo, and I am going to buy a T-Shirt. I think that I would give drobbins a job, kind of like the job that Linus has at Transmeta, he works for them, but has the ability to do kernel work as well, plus trans gets their chips to be in kernel quick I would assume.

One question that I have is, say, that drobbins can't get a job, what happens to Gentoo? I know that Gentoo is a collective thing, but I believe that a large portion of the distro is based on drobbins' work, and it would be not good to lose lots of time and effort that is put into the distro by him.

Maybe talk with IBM about a job? I think they might be interested? Having the fastest Linux distro come standard on mainframes / z servers / their e thing, what ever that is for web stuff????

Can I have a job too? :roll:

No, not really. I think that the situation drobbins is in right now is slightly more important than me getting a job. And anyways, I am a TA for intro engineering class, $8.50 an hour, whoot!

As for viewing this from poor college student's prospective... if drobbins goes into "very little cash mode"(tm), he could fill out FAFSA form, apply to a school, get lots of financial aid, major in something that he doesn't have a degree in ( i have no idea what ) and get free bandwidth for 4 years?? :lol:

Just my long and silly $0.001.

Techie2000 · Guru Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 344

Well I would be willing to do my part. I will not donate via paypal or similar services. I would be willing to buy a distro CD to make a donation. An idea I may or may not use, is what about making certain faster mirrors subscription based. Something that'll probably be considered anyways as the bandwidth load increases along with the user base.
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squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 5:22 am Post subject:

I just paid my $28.99 for my tshirt + shippin'. I feel like I have bettered the world.

taskara · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 5:23 am Post subject:

I PROPOSE WE DONATE US$50 TO GENTOO

and then have a club member number or something.

I will donate $50 and become gentoo user #1

then we can see how much we have donated.

let's try and get 1000 members!

anyone seconding such a motion?

Valen · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 5:39 am Post subject:

You're not getting any cash out of me until I sell last year's university texts

Actually I managed to get a pretty good job last summer and wouldn't mind donating something. What I would mind is a nagging reminder system: I feel that all payments should be completely voluntary, it should certainly be easy for people to find out how to donate but I don't think it should be implied that they should donate.

I'm not really sure if this is a possible way to sustain Gentoo and OSS in general has a very hard time fitting into a working business model but I think this is the only nice way to go about it.

squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 6:00 am Post subject:

konstk · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 75

If we pay $50 or $10 or whatever we should have a vote on things like features, etc.

taskara · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 2:37 pm Post subject:

fair enough.. what ever floats your boat

squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 2:51 pm Post subject:

cf25 · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 158

you people with the voting ideas...

i hope you are somehow involved with gentoo other than maybe writing up the occasionaly ebuild and participating in the forum. if you have ideas, thats what forums and mailing lists are for. but letting people vote on a product they aren't developing is off the mark. the developers know which way they want to go based on peoples dicussions and their own views. not on whether x amount of people thing a gui installer would be cool. member voting bad.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Just to clarify, my subscription idea would be voluntary.

As for spending $30 on a t-shirt, of which $10 went to Gentoo... something seems out of whack. I can mail a $10 check and not waste money on an overpriced t-shirt, or just send a $30 check. *shrug* Whatever floats your boat though.
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squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 6:38 pm Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

No problem, just not something I can bring myself to do. When someone posted a link to the site, I was interested until I saw the prices and donation ration. Just to be clear, I wasn't criticizing anyone.
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squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 6:42 pm Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

I'd be curious to hear from those that vote 'No'. The question "Do you want to help Gentoo financially?". If you cannot afford it, that doesn't mean you don't 'want' to help.
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klieber · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 9:22 pm Post subject:

As someone who has supported the Gentoo community financially, let me pitch in my $.02.

Yes, the software is offered for Free and yes, that's a great thing. However, the rest of the world hasn't caught up yet so most things, like bandwidth, computer hardware, etc. still cost money. (insert obligatory reference to the failure of communism) That money has to come from somewhere -- why not the users themselves? Just because you don't have to pay any money for the program doesn't mean you shouldn't.

It absolutely amazes me how difficult it is to get linux users (or Free software users in general) to pony up any sort of cash or other remuneration for programs that they use and rely upon on a day-to-day basis. I regularly make small donations to software programs that I find valuable to my work and personal life. I can't tell you the number of times I've received an amazed email from the programmer saying, "WOW!!! You were the first person to ever send me anything. THANK YOU!" I think that's sad -- it reflects poorly on the linux/Free Software community and makes us all look like leeches.

There may be those folks who simply cannot afford to donate even $5 to the cause and that's fine. For the other 99.9% of us, is it really that big of a deal to cough up $5 for a full-featured, robust operating system???? That's one beer at a bar. (OK, two if you drink swill)

Or, look at it from a purely selfish point of view -- the more time drobbins and Co. have to work on Gentoo, the better it gets, more features get added, etc. That's a Good Thing, last I checked.

--kurt
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squanto · Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2002 9:28 pm Post subject:

bwoods · n00b Joined: 08 Sep 2002 Posts: 2

klieber

fghellar