FSF-FUNDING(7)

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version 16.2.1+r23+gd564253eb6c8 · 18 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 FSF-FUNDING 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to fsf-funding(7) — it's a GNU manual page, section 7, and it's literally just a vibe-check on how money gets to free software. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

fsf-funding — Funding Free Software. that's it, that's the whole name, and honestly? iconic. 👑

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

💸 Funding Free Software

okay so here's the tea: if you want more free software to exist a few years from now, it lowkey makes sense for you to hype people up to throw funds at its development. and the most effective approach known — like, the one we actually know works — is to get commercial redistributors to donate. 💅

so like, users of free software systems can absolutely speed up the pace of development by encouraging for-a-fee distributors to donate part of their selling price to free software developers — the Free Software Foundation, and others too. it's giving community, fr fr. 🌈

and the way you convince distributors to do this? you demand it and you expect it from them. periodt. so when you're comparing distributors, judge them partly by how much they give to free software development. make them feel the pressure — show them they gotta compete to be the one who gives the most. main character energy only. ✨

to make this approach work, you must insist on numbers that you can compare.

like, actual comparable numbers. example that slays: We will donate ten dollars to the Frobnitz project for each disk sold. 🎀

do not let them get away with a vague promise like A portion of the profits are donated, because that gives you literally no basis for comparison. it's giving nothing. 💀

and even a precise fraction — of the profits from this disk — is not very meaningful, because creative accounting and unrelated business decisions can greatly alter what fraction of the sales price even 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. yeah. nothing. 😭

some redistributors do development work themselves, and that's useful too! but to keep everyone honest, you need to inquire how much they do, and what kind. because some kinds of development make way 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 — like adding a new CPU to the GNU Compiler Collection — contribute more 🔥
  • major new features or packages contribute the most 👑

so by establishing the idea that supporting further development is the proper thing to do when distributing free software for a fee, we can assure a steady flow of resources into making more free software. slay. 💜

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

go read those next bestie, they're right there. 📚

Copyright (c) 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this section is permitted without royalty; alteration is not permitted.

read that again — verbatim copying and redistribution is permitted without royalty, but alteration is not permitted. don't be out here editing it, okay? 🙈

and that's the whole page!! this came from gcc-16, dated 2026-08-10, and it lives in the FSF-FUNDING(7) manual section. mwah, go forth and demand receipts from your redistributors 💋🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from