
Help me start a FOSS Tithing movement - epi0Bauqu
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/help-me-start-a-foss-tithing-movement.html
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brianm
Speaking as a long time open source contributor, it is even better to
contribute bug reports (detailed, replicable), assistance to folks on the
users mailing lists, and code (if you are able).

Donating money to open source organizations is great, as there is almost
always some overhead, but contributing in kind is even better!

That said, if you want to donate money, here are links to donate directly to a
few open source foundations, off the top of my head:

<http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html>

<http://www.python.org/psf/donations/>

<https://my.fsf.org/donate>

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I already do that--of course, one could always do more. Additionally, I never
said a pledge had to be money--10% time would be great as well, i.e. FOSS
fridays every other week or something.

With the donations, it would of course be up to the pledger, but I was
thinking something more directed with higher bang for the buck. Some ideas
there would be for specific tasks that never seem to get done, or via
bounties, or for student contests.

In general though, I'm thinking more on a company basis rather than
individual. My thought was that if a company could make a public pledge,
they'd be more likely to embed it in their culture. Of course, it may be hard
for existing companies to do it, so I'm thinking it may be more appropriate
for startups.

~~~
blhack
This is completely irrelevant to the discussion, but your account is exactly
1337 days old today.

Happy leet day to you :)

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tseabrooks
I for one don't think this is a very good idea. Firstly, I'm reminded of Jeff
Atwood's article in 2008 (<http://bit.ly/d82uSD>) where he talks about
discovering that the open source project he donated $5000 to simply had no way
to use the money.

More over, as a developer open source software has never sat well with me. I
don't understand how it got so hip and cool. I don't understand why anyone
would want to participate. I'm damned good at my job... but I don't do it for
free for anyone... My time is too valuable and my friends and family deserve
to have as much time with me as possible. I know I'm mostly alone in this
around these parts... But maybe someone can explain why so many people give
away their free time using their hard earned, and valuable, skills for free.

Though I do appreciate all their hard work, and I use open source products, I
just don't understand why they do it.

~~~
stevejohnson
I never liked that Atwood post because he cherry picked one open source
product to raise a stink about when there are thousands of other individual
projects that _can_ use donations. Also, the Apache Foundation, the PSF, the
FSF, and many more organizations have a history of taking _and using_
donations to advance the development and use of many open source projects.

As for your comments about not being motivated to work on FOSS or not
understanding why it exists, I'm not sure how that's relevant to this
discussion. I don't have the time or inclination to argue with you about why
OSS exists and is important, but while it's here and _actively helping me do
my job_ , I don't understand an argument against supporting those projects
with bug reports, patches, and yes, money.

~~~
tseabrooks
Maybe I wasn't clear. I just have a hard time supporting something
(financially) when I don't really understand the motivations of the people
behind it. I'm all for bug reports and the like.

~~~
stevejohnson
Why do you think you need to understand their motivations? It's a simple
proposition: you give them money, and they make the software better because
they are able to buy servers, take time off work, etc.

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psawaya
This seems like a voluntary version of the "software tax" RMS wrote about way
back in the day in the GNU manifesto (<http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html>,
see “Programmers need to make a living somehow.”)

I guess it never caught on then, but perhaps now that most software companies
benefit in some way from FOSS, it makes more sense. At any rate, you deserve
much props for making this pledge.

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jrockway
A lot of employers will match your contributions up to some limit ($10,000
seems pretty standard), so if you do this, make sure you get your employer to
match. You can actually get people to write some software with $20,000.

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lkrubner
I think it is difficult to get these movements going among individuals. I
think it is easier to establish this as a cultural norm among those businesses
that make money from open source. If the goal is to raise more money for open
source projects, then the fundraising will work best if it is some dedicated
amount of a company's profits. I think the consumers of open source
technologies would appreciate knowing that some tiny percentage of their funds
go back to the projects that make it all possible. For instance, if every ISP
(using open source software) was committed to sending .01% of their profits to
the Apache Foundation, it would offer Apache a degree of independence from
those who currently pay its bills, and I, for one, would be pleased to know
that some of my money was going to the software that makes my sites possible.

The donations need to be automated as much as possible. At wpquestions.com we
send out some small amount of money every month to the people who have created
plugins for WordPress, whenever a question is posted about that plugin. The
whole process is automated, no one needs to think about it. I think
establishing this as a cultural norm throughout the open source community
would help make the open source eco-system more vibrant. And lots of small
payments from many small businesses probably allows greater freedom of
maneuver (for the open source projects) than having a few big projects paid
for by a few big corporations - simply looking at Oracle's handling of Java
convinces me of the dangers of having all funding come from just a few
sources.

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alanh
It’s a wonderful idea. But won’t this be sending most money to those who least
need it — e.g. lots to the big projects, and none to the little guys who spend
days to months a year, but no more, on small, lesser-used but valuable open-
source projects? I would like to see those little guys get a bigger chunk.

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waxman
This is an awesome idea!

I owe so much to FOSS it's not even funny.

It'd be nice to give something back (beyond bug fixes and my own, lame
contributions).

~~~
gurraman
No need to wait for this to take off if you're eager -- many FOSS projects
accept donations already.

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wzdd
This sounds like flattr to me, particularly since they were going to set
things up so you could repeatedly flattr the same sites (not sure if that's
happened yet). Is there is a philosophical difference?

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bdr
This makes more sense for individuals than companies. Startup get bought? Give
10% of your payout to the FOSS that helped you get there.

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macco
I like the idea. I written something an donating to open source projects
myself: [http://rockiger.com/en/blog/view/linux-users-are-software-
pi...](http://rockiger.com/en/blog/view/linux-users-are-software-pirates)

Imo contributing isn't enough. First class software is (often) in need of
fulltime first class developers.

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BornInTheUSSR
Part of me thinks that if all the companies that exist and thrive thanks to
open source did this, we would advance tech much quicker. On the other hand,
maybe it is the constraints and passion alone that have kept the community at
its present level of quality.

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Loic
In the same kind of approach, you have _1% for the Planet_. When you are part
of the organization, like my company, you pay 1% of your turnover to one or
more accredited environmental organizations each year. _1% for the Planet_ is
not a middle man, they just control that you paid and allow you to use its
label in your communication.

<http://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org>

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firdaus
In a way, I think it's better for open source projects that need money to go
the AGPL route. The way I see it with pledging is that you'd be getting
companies that are already donating/contributing back to open source projects.
Whether this will be more or less than what they're already contributing
remains to be seen.

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duck
Awesome idea Gabriel!

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bhiggins
you wanna use the word tithe then you're going to be brining in a lot of
connotation baggage. not a fan.

~~~
wwortiz
Haven't you ever heard of the church of emacs?

