by Setting up donations and sponsorship
In Germany, due to rules and regulations that we are famous for, it is quite cumbersome to set up to be able to collect donations, and it is also a lot of work to be done to keep it up. So, we have been looking for a service not unlike the well-known Patreon, but Open Source and with the option to allow one time donations and monthly backing. We decided to use Open Collective. We are still working on setting things up, but they are already functional. So, if your money is burning a hole in your pocket, you can already throw it in our general direction. We have set up two donation pages, one for Europe and one for the US. If you live in neither, choose what you prefer or what is closest to you.
What do we need money for?
We need to pay for two servers (web server and build server). Server cost at the moment is ~ $80 per month, which is too expensive. Both servers are oversized, and we will try to cut things down a bit to maybe $50. We also need funds to meet at least once per year at a Linux convention. Then there is the occasional need to either exchange broken hardware or supply hardware for a certain use case. We roughly estimate that we need $1.500 per year to keep the project up and running.
What does Open Collective do for us?
Open Collective has some nice features. For one, it takes care of everything for us, it eliminates the need to set up a charitable organization, takes care of taxes and the like. On the other hand it is fully transparent both ways. Anyone can see what comes in and what goes out and what it was spent for. There is not much to see on our page yet, but a good example can be seen on the Manjaro community page.
On the downside, if you want to call it that, they keep 10% of the money coming in to pay for their infrastructure and the services they offer. We think that is a fair trade-off for us, as we don’t have the time nor the nerve to deal with this any more than necessary.
With that, I want to thank all past and future donators and sponsors, Please stay safe and healthy in these dire times!
Thank you for your efforts. You’re offering a terrific distro to us. I’ve always hoped you would succeed, and you have. I’m an American who loves Germany’s people, and their abilities to do so many things.
I will try to contribute a little, as time goes on. I’m on a fixed military disability income, and we live from month to month. But siduction is important.
Best wishes to all of you at Siduction. Be safe, and be well.
Thanks, and same to you and your family.
Thank you for all your good work on siduction. The latest Farewell version is the best yet.
I am trying to contact akli to volunteer to help with the updated English version of the manual, but I cannot find his email address anywhere. Please ask him to contact me at DonJoyceWard@gmail.com. I had Google translate operate on the German version and the results were less than wonderful. However, I have been working with the old English version, that Google translation, and other background sources and have completed what are called sections (or chapters?) 1 and 2; I also have a preliminary copy of section 3 (still needs some pruning for readability). But I do not understand how to use the markup files (though they are part of what I mean as “other background sources” above) akli has placed in the Git-hub repositories for the English Sidu-Manual. If I can get a valid email to communicate with him, I will send him copies of what I have at least.