Re: Open for donations (was Re: gEDA-user: Languages etc)

[Karel Kulhavy <clock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 08:50:12PM -0700, Stephen Williams wrote:
> Stephen Meier wrote:
> >[...]  In general, I 
> >have a hudge amount of apprectiation for Arles, Dan, DJ, Stuart, Steve, 
> >Stuart and others. They have written a lot of usefull code. It might not 
> >be written with the best language. It might not be of the best style. 
> >But it works and it is very usefull. For those of this group, not 
> >including the pcb team, can you find a way to accept donations? I would 
> >love to send each of you enough cash to take your significant other out 
> >to a good resteraunt.
> 
> Well, OK. You talked me into it.
> 
> Due to popular demand, I have added a Donations page to my web
> site: <http://www.icarus.com/eda/verilog/donations.html>, or go
> to the main page and follow the Donations link. It uses PayPal
> because it's disgustingly simple to use PayPal. We'll see how well
> it works in practice:-)

I think it would be better if all free software and hardware projects
were receiving so much donations from the public that the developers
could dedicate themselves to the on full time.

On Ronja I am trying to set up such model. I got already 68 000 CZK
(2800 USD) which covered development of 4 modules with Czech-typical
hour rate.

If it sometimes starts to finally fully work (now the rate of sending
donations is way too slow), I would like to solve situations when Ronja
needs some feature from gEDA in this way:

1) Ask the gEDA developers to implement it and announce it the same way as
Ronja announces it's new modules
2) I would send the necessary donation from Ronja and calculate it
simply as expense
3) Ronja would receive the necessary feature with quite high priority
against unpaid features which would increase the speed of development
-> Ronja users would be happier -> they would send more contributions
-> they would cover the expense on gEDA donation.

The model of proprietary technology and consumerist civilization with
automaton conformism is simply broken and inhuman. We need to find some
alternative way, otherwise we will have to perpetually do work we don't
like under conditions that don't guarantee our lifetime's work won't be
wasted.

CL<
> 
> -- 
> Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
> steve at icarus.com           But I have promises to keep,
> http://www.icarus.com         and lines to code before I sleep,
> http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."