[vox-if] IF donations

[Bill Kendrick]

Sorry for not getting to this sooner.  I was hoping someone else, more
versed in the ways of the Installfest, could respond.  So, I'll give you MY
opinions. :^)

On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 03:03:32PM -0800, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> We received $40 in donations at the IF yesterday.  After pizza and soda 
> costs, $10 remains for LUGOD.  I'll bring it to a meeting eventually, 
> unless someone wants it sooner than that.

Sounds fine.


> After some thought, I decided not to ask for donations for giving away 
> distribution cds.  This probably goes explicitly against many of the 
> copyrights, and I didn't feel right about it in general.

It depends on the distro CDs.  This CAN be kind of a sticky area.
However, based on what I know and understand of the GPL and Open Source
licenses in general, as long as it's something that you can legally burn
and give away AT ALL, you also have the right to ask for money for it
(e.g., to cover cost of the CD, time, etc.)


Of course, the whole disc burning thing isn't exactly a solid line between
donations at meetings/IFs --> buy discs --> get them burned --> give away.

Sometimes people burn discs in return for blanks.  Sometimes people just
burn discs and send them to us (Tim Riley's been keeping me well fed with
Knoppix lately).  I think everyone understands that we aren't running this
like some kind of CD replication business, and are happy to donate to LUGOD,
to help out in any way money can help (e.g., domain name, PO box,
demo computer, projector, photocopying, advertising, paying for a booth at
a conference, other kinds of outreach, etc.)


> Instead, I 
> asked ALL installees to donate to LUGOD, suggesting ~$5, whether they 
> took home cds or not.  Most were very happy to do so.

And of course, since there's no obligation, everyone with any kind of
reasoning capabilities understand that they're not being coerced. :^)
Just like the donation jar at meetings.  Noone should feel like they're
being FORCED to give us money!  If they do, they've misunderstood something,
somewhere!!!


> If they wanted 
> lunch too, I asked for a separate donation for that, and again that 
> seemed to work fine.  Any thoughts?

That sounds reasonable.  Hehe, gives me a thought tho... I wonder if any
pizza places would be willing to donate pizza to our events.  I see places
like Jamba Juice and others have "Mr./Ms./Mrs. XYZ's 2nd Grade Class Thanks
FOOD_STORE_ABC!"  Probably for donating food to some event.  HHhhmmm :)

I wonder if Lamppost remembers us? ;)

-bill!
bill@newbreedsoftware.com                           Got kids?  Get Tux Paint! 
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