06-14-2006

An Easy Way to Support Open Source Software

I’d like to share some information on how you may be able to support open source software with very little effort. Though dates can vary, the fiscal year for some organizations ends on June 30. To help justify budgets, managers often scramble to spend every last penny by the close of the budget cycle. It may be an opportune time to suggest a donation to support open source projects. To help justify a donation, you can point to specific foundations that support the software your organization uses.

This year I tried to get money donated to some of the open source projects in use where I work. Though management liked the idea, this year’s budget surplus will go instead to cover other budget shortfalls. However, I’d like to share the information with others, in the hopes that it might help someone else arrange a donation to their favorite open source projects.

Below are links to information about donating to various open source non-profits. All of these foundations are IRS 501(c)(3) non-profits, according to their respective websites.:

If you manage to arrange a donation by your employer, I’d be interested in hearing about it in the comments.

Posted by Matt in money, tech | RSS 2.0

2 Responses to “An Easy Way to Support Open Source Software”
  1. Tom Copeland Says:

    One more - Ruby Central!
    http://www.rubycentral.org/pledge/
    They’re a good crew; they just bought new hardware for RubyForge:
    http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/juniordeveloper/2006/06/new_rubyforge_h.html

  2. eIT Says:

    Nice idea, perhaps not the most sustainable, but every bit helps

    Making revenues from free & open source software is one of the most frequently asked questions these days. While there have been a few successful examples of companies (like MySQL, Red Hat etc) which are making money, I’d surmise that these are still very early days for open source revenue & profit models.

    While open source as an operational paradigm certainly has been having exceptional success against proprietary and closed-software models in the recent past, in my opinion, a lot more thought need to be given and experimentations done before the emergence of viable revenue models for the free & open source models that can successfully compete with the current proprietary software revenue model. Some specifics of the business models are emerging fast, but it will take a few years for the market to test each of these out and hopefully, the fittest will survive.

    A site that focuses exclusively on revenue models from free, open source software is Follars.com – Free, Open-source Dollars - http://www.follars.com !

    Ec @ IT, Software Database @ http://www.eit.in

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