Funding Free Software - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 3 - USING GCC Using Instructions

Chapter 15.

Funding Free Software

If you want to have more free software a few years from now, it makes sense for you to help encourage
people to contribute funds for its development. The most effective approach known is to encourage
commercial redistributors to donate.
Users of free software systems can boost the pace of development by encouraging for-a-fee distrib-
utors to donate part of their selling price to free software developers--the Free Software Foundation,
and others.
The way to convince distributors to do this is to demand it and expect it from them. So when you
compare distributors, judge them partly by how much they give to free software development. Show
distributors they must compete to be the one who gives the most.
To make this approach work, you must insist on numbers that you can compare, such as, "We will
donate ten dollars to the Frobnitz project for each disk sold." Don't be satisfied with a vague promise,
such as "A portion of the profits are donated," since it doesn't give a basis for comparison.
Even a precise fraction "of the profits from this disk" is not very meaningful, since creative accounting
and unrelated business decisions can greatly alter what fraction of the sales price counts as profit. If
the price you pay is $50, ten percent of the profit is probably less than a dollar; it might be a few cents,
or nothing at all.
Some redistributors do development work themselves. This is useful too; but to keep everyone honest,
you need to inquire how much they do, and what kind. Some kinds of development make much more
long-term difference than others. For example, maintaining a separate version of a program contributes
very little; maintaining the standard version of a program for the whole community contributes much.
Easy new ports contribute little, since someone else would surely do them; difficult ports such as
adding a new CPU to the GNU Compiler Collection contribute more; major new features or packages
contribute the most.
By establishing the idea that supporting further development is "the proper thing to do" when dis-
tributing free software for a fee, we can assure a steady flow of resources into making more free
software.
Copyright © 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this section is permitted
without royalty; alteration is not permitted.