[CentOS] centos friends?

[Scott Silva]

on 5/5/2011 1:55 PM Dave Stevens spake the following:
> Hello All,
> 
> I want to ask about CentOS and money. Please do not start some kind of 
> shitstorm over this, it isn't productive.
> 
> I have just been looking at archive.org to see when the paypal option went 
> missing from the donate menu at centos.org. I can't pin it down, but it was 
> there on October 16, 2010 and isn't now, so that's the information I have on 
> that point.
> 
> There was a great deal of argy-bargy on this list when the 5.6 update was slow 
> arriving. I don't want to go there, I was happy to see it when it arrived, as 
> I always am when there's an update.
> 
> The impression I got was that the maintainers and packagers were working as 
> hard as they could and were tetchy about being nagged, being unable to do 
> more. Fair enough, but we need not adopt the status quo entirely.
> 
> The donate menu on the web site has this to say, (and more) ...
> 
> "The CentOS team would like to remind you that the primary means of 
> substaining the development of CentOS is via contributions by CentOS users.
> 
> CentOS is now, and will continue to be totally free; however, it takes money 
> and resources to make CentOS available.
> 
> If you are able, please consider donating to the CentOS Project. Donations of 
> promo material, public mirrors and dedicated servers are all vital to our 
> contined operations.
> 
> Monetary
> 
> CentOS is currently reviewing our cash donation program. In the mean time we 
> are not accepting any financial donations. We do appreciate though, if you 
> want to - for example - help out with promo material. See our Wiki page on 
> donations for more up to date information."
> 
> So referring as directed to the wiki page shows:
> 
> "Resource and financial needs
> 
> The CentOS Project is entirely based on the efforts of volunteers. We rely on 
> contributions and donations from CentOS users as well, for:
> 
>     * Logistics related to promotion and infrastructure
>     * Specific hardware needs
>     * Bandwidth and connectivity
>     * Promotion material at conferences and exhibitions
>     * Organizing CentOS-related events "
> 
> I don't see anything there about money except in the first line and I'm really 
> curious why. Internally it is clear that if the team hasn't put in place some 
> cash donation basis probably the capacity isn't there. But the current team 
> need not go into areas where they have no time or (perhaps) expertise. There 
> are lots of capable money folks in the free software world who can and do 
> accept donations and deal with administrative infrastructure and channel 
> support to projects. So the name apache-friends is suggestive. Without 
> necessarily using that model I wonder why there isn't a CentOS Friends group 
> or fund to which I and others can donate. I can't help but believe that if 
> there were, say, a couple of paid staff with CentOS as the day job, things 
> would not be so burdensome to the devs we have now and maybe we could build on 
> that.
> 
> For my part, I installed CentOS on some machines I administer for non-profit 
> groups in Canada. The lack of licencing fees makes a big difference to them, 
> non-profits groups are perpetuually long on brains and short on cash. But even 
> so I think we could cough up, say, ten bucks a year per machine to put some 
> payback into CentOS. Given general widespread goodwill this might be 
> multiplied significantly.
> 
> I have not seen this discussed on the list and would be happy to know if there 
> is some reason it hasn't been attempted.
> 
> Please let me repeat, this is meant as a constructive suggestion, there is no 
> problem with the product, quite the reverse.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> 
> 
Here is a bit of why the donation button went away (It was back in 2009 or so)...


http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10300222-92.html

http://www.osnews.com/comments/21921