Re: individually funded development

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, COFFMAN Steven wrote:

>I've contributed two video cards to driver maintainers in the past by
>figuring out who wrote drivers for similar cards, contacting them
>individually, and mailing them the same card I had, no strings attached.
>One produced a working driver, the other did not, and I was fine with
>both outcomes.
>
>Is there an easier or better way for individual users such as myself to
>directly assist XFree86 development financially? Where could I send my
>money that would be useful? Xfree86.org? DRI? Tungsten Graphics?
>Individual developers? What would be a minimum contribution to cover the
>overhead of accepting such donations?

While I'm sure that nobody would refuse money donated, I don't
think such donations really have any effect on the outcome.  I
believe the _only_ way any form of financial contribution affects
development at all, is in the form of a business contract whereby
some company funds the development of a new feature or driver, or
the completion of an existing one.  These types of contracts are
generally in the 5 or 6 digit range and have specific
deliverables written in the contracts.  So while
$20/$100/whatever donations to XFree86.org/DRI/whatever would
likely be welcomed, I don't believe that they would really 
accomplish much other than leaving one's wallet a bit lighter.

The best type of contribution that someone can make to any open
source project(s) are volunteering their time and skills to the
project(s).  This can be in the form of fixing bugs and supplying 
patches, debugging and troubleshooting, doing bug triage, testing 
hardware, determining what documentation is missing and 
trying to complete it, contributing web content, and various 
other things.  Even merely helping users out in email and/or IRC 
or creating HOWTO documents and FAQs on the web can be a very big 
help to projects like XFree86 and DRI.

A monetary donation, unless of rather large size, isn't likely to 
do much that is very beneficial IMHO.  Of course this is just my 
opinion, and I'm sure those who might be on the receiving end of 
such a donation might disagree.  ;o)

At least one person I know whom gets offered donations for his 
efforts, requests instead that the donator donate the offered 
money to the EFF (sp?) or other organizations, or to programs to 
put computers in schools, etc.

Just sharing some thoughts.

TTYL

-- 
Mike A. Harris