[wellylug] Re: [NZOSS-OpenChat] OSS Donations Proposal (was: Draft Survey of financial contributions to Linux distros)

Damon Lynch damon at dev-zone.org
Wed Aug 14 14:13:08 NZST 2002


David's proposal is also a good idea because NZers who contribute will
see they are part of a bigger movement, instead of being a lone
individual.  It builds community and solidarity.  Who knows, it may
catch on in other countries if they see what we have done.  Imagine a
country like India where many people could contribute very little, but
there are gazillions of Indians who use Linux and that could add up to a
lot......

Damon

On Wed, 2002-08-14 at 13:54, David McNab wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've got an idea for how NZOSS could offer substantial support to some
> of the wonderful OSS initiatives happening out there. Please bear with
> me and read through this.
> 
> Many or most of us have the desire to support OSS projects.
> 
> But there are those of us who, for one reason or another, don't use
> credit cards. In such cases, PayPal is not an option - if you reside
> outside USA, and don't have a credit card, there is *no way* of using
> PayPal to send or receive payments. I think PayPal are forced into this,
> to stop "those gahd-damn terrorists from sneaking chemical weapons funds
> around the place".
> 
> For people in this situation, the only option is to do a wire funds
> transfer, or mail a foreign drafted cheque. But I'm personally a bit
> loath to do this, especially when I have to go to the bank and spend
> $10-$25 in fees. The only times I've sent money overseas for anything
> computer/software/internet related, (apart from a couple of Window$
> $hareware registrations in my bad old days) is a payment to the EFF.
> 
> But within the NZ banking system is the excellent facility of Automatic
> Payments. Many banks only charge a nominal setup, say $5, but don't levy
> *any* transaction charges for each payment itself. They only charge if
> you alter the amount.
> 
> I'd be a lot more willing to contribute to software projects if I could
> set up an automatic payment (say $1-$5/week), provided there's some
> agency here in NZ to accumulate/distribute collected funds. A few people
> making such uPayments certainly adds up. Imagine hordes of CS students
> each kicking in $0.50/week.
> 
> I'd like to propose that NZOSS consider acting as a payments collection
> agency, a funnel for collecting regular donations, and apportioning them
> to OSS organisations according to the will of each contributor.
> 
> What would be really fancy is if the NZOSS site had a database of
> contributors and beneficiaries. Each contributor can then log on, and
> enter a percentage breakdown of payments to beneficiaries.
> 
> For example, I could log on and say "I want 30% of my regular payment to
> go to SourceMage, 30% to the Debian Project, 20% to the EFF and 20% to
> Dunedin hacker Ms Noeline Zitts".
> 
> It would then be a simple matter to determine when accumulated payments
> to each given beneficiary have reached a level where the funds can be
> transferred to them. For example, when accumulated donations to Debian
> reach $400, the NZOSS treasurer can cut a cheque and mail it to the
> Debian Project in USA - or even automatically instruct NZOSS's bank to
> make the payment.
> 
> If this proposal receives general support within NZOSS, I'd be willing
> to write the PHP/*SQL scripts to implement it.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Cheers
> David
> 
> 


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