FSF-FUNDING(7)

💖 FSF-FUNDING(7) 💖

Manual: GNU 🌸

✨ NAME ✨

fsf-funding - Funding Free Software 🦋

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Funding Free Software 💅

okay so, if you want to have more free software a few years from now, it makes total sense to help encourage people to chip in funds for its development. The most effective approach known is to encourage commercial redistributors to donate. 🔥

Users of free software systems can literally speed up development by encouraging for-a-fee distributors 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 have to insist on numbers you can actually compare, like, We will donate ten dollars to the Frobnitz project for each disk sold.'' Don't settle for a vague promise like A portion of the profits are donated,'' because that doesn't give you 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, bestie; but to keep everyone honest, you need to ask how much they do, and what kind. Some kinds of development make a way bigger 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 a lot. 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 distributing free software for a fee, we can assure a steady flow of resources into making more free software. 🌈🫶

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

gpl(7), gfdl(7). 🧚

💅 COPYRIGHT 💅

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

Bye bestie, this page is from gcc-3.3, dated 2003-03-01, and it's still giving main character energy 💖✨🎀