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- <title>GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals: Funding</title>
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- Next: <a href="GNU-Project.html#GNU-Project" accesskey="n" rel="next">GNU Project</a>, Previous: <a href="Match-and-Simplify.html#Match-and-Simplify" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Match and Simplify</a>, Up: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Option-Index.html#Option-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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- <a name="Funding-Free-Software"></a>
- <h2 class="unnumbered">Funding Free Software</h2>
- <p>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.
- </p>
- <p>Users of free software systems can boost 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.
- </p>
- <p>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.
- </p>
- <p>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.
- </p>
- <p>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.
- </p>
- <p>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.
- </p>
- <p>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.
- </p>
- <div class="display">
- <pre class="display">Copyright © 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
- Verbatim copying and redistribution of this section is permitted
- without royalty; alteration is not permitted.
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