Free software funding proposal

proclus writes: “I
submitted this suggestion to Pat McGovern of SourceForge. He is a really busy guy, so don’t hold your breath, but I think that there are some ideas here that are worth discussing.
Here’s the text.

Have you considered starting a service like

PayPal, so
that free software developers could be compensated by
users who are unable to contribute to the code base?

PyMOL
recently recieved it’s first contributions, and

GNU-Darwin
recieved it’s first user contribution via
PayPal in the last few days.

I think that it would be appropriate for the
SourceForge to recoup some operational money from such
transactions. There are other efforts to help
free software projects with funding, such as

Free Developers
and others.
Perhaps these efforts could be merged or conjoined for
maximum impact. For those who would not contribute
money, perhaps they would buy their favorite project a
gift from

ThinkGeek (Merry Christmas!).

This effort would be particularly helpful to smaller
projects, which are often clumsy in their first
attempts to deal with user contributions. I think that
much good will and good press would be the result of
this maneuver, and it would also benefit free software
developers, who bring so many benefits to others.

Regards,
proclus

GNU-Darwin.org

P.S. At this time, the

proclus realm PayPal
is handling donations to The
GNU-Darwin Distribution.
To donate to the PyMOL project, visit their webpage.”