Linux Fund is an organization that has been raising money and making donations to

Free and Open Source Software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

(FOSS) projects since 1999. IRS 501(c)(3) status was granted to Linux Fund in August 2007, allowing direct solicitations to individuals and charitable foundations. Prior to receiving the 501(c)(3) letter, the principal funding source had been an affinity credit card program with credit cards bearing a graphic of Tux, the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

Penguin. Visa cards are currently offered in the US by

US Bank U.S. Bancorp (stylized as us bancorp) is an American bank holding company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and incorporated in Delaware. It is the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association, and is the fifth largest banking institution ...

;

Roots

Linux Fund was founded at the peak of the 1999 high-tech boom with an affinity credit card from

MBNA MBNA Corporation was a bank holding company and parent company of wholly owned subsidiary MBNA America Bank, N.A., headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, prior to being acquired by Bank of America in 2006. History The former Maryland National ...

. They gave away their first T-shirt in the summer of 1999 at the LinuxWorld Expo. By the summer of 2000, their Grants to Developers Program had begun.

Confusion and stagnation

A few years after surviving the dot-com bubble, the organization fell into stagnation. In June 2005, investigating reports that their website was down, NewsForge's Jay Lyman revealed that the organization was not actively distributing funds to FOSS projects. Lyman reported that funds from the MBNA cards continued to flow and the organization had $126,155.29 (and growing) in the bank. Then-executive-director, Jerritt Collord, told Lyman that he had gotten "burned out" and that the "largely one-man organization" was sitting idle after lackluster success with his

Open Oregon Technology Center Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001 * ''Open'' (YF ...

Rebuilding

In the Fall of 2005 the founding directors met, decided to clean up the organizational backlog and start funding FOSS projects again. In June 2005, Bank of America bought MBNA. In April 2007, Bank of America gave Linux Fund notice that the affinity MasterCard program would be discontinued effective June 30, 2007. On July 1, 2007

released a Linux Fund Visa card. In August 2007 the IRS granted Linux Fund 501(c)(3) status. In May 2009 the Open Hardware Foundation joined Linux Fund.

Current projects

Prior to cancellation by Bank of America, Linux Fund was supporting about 10 different projects including

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

, the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...

, Blender (software), Free Geek,

freenode Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname , which load balances connections by u ...

, and

OpenSSH OpenSSH (also known as OpenBSD Secure Shell) is a suite of secure networking utilities based on the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, which provides a secure channel over an unsecured network in a client–server architecture. Network Working G ...

. A typical grant was $500/month with renewable 6 and 12-month commitments. Linux Fund has also given lump-sum donations on the order of $1,000–$5,000. Project funding was frozen briefly when Bank of America canceled the USA MasterCard agreement. Funding has since resumed with the new US Bank Visa card. Current projects include a mix of open-source software and hardware projects including Gnash,

Inkscape Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Other formats can be imported and exported. Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. re ...

LiVES Lives may refer to: * The plural form of a ''life'' * Lives, Iran, a village in Khuzestan Province, Iran * The number of lives in a video game * ''Parallel Lives'', aka ''Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans'', a series of biographies of famous m ...

, and the

Open Graphics Project The Open Graphics Project (OGP) was founded with the goal to design an open-source hardware / open architecture and standard for graphics cards, primarily targeting free software / open-source operating systems. The project created a reprogramm ...

Funding model

In 2005 Debian Project Leader Branden Robinson thanked the Linux Fund for their continued support of the Debian Project and noted the benefit of long-term grants to FOSS projects:

This funding will ... enable us to do a bit more forward planning. Debian runs entirely on donations ... and a steady, predictable flow of revenue should help us feel comfortable with some more long-range resource planning. Linux Fund deserves not just our thanks, but credit for pioneering new funding models for the Free Software community.Debian - News - The Debian Project receives Funding
/ref>

Cards

* The original USA Linux Fund card was a MasterCard issued by MBNA. * The current USA Linux Fund card is a Visa issued by US Bank. * The current and original USA BSD Fund card is a Visa issued by US Bank. * The Canadian Linux Fund card was a MasterCard issued by MBNA. It is no longer offered.

Board members

* Ilan Rabinovitch, Jeremy Garcia, Randal Schwartz

Current officers

* Ilan Rabinovitch, President; Jeremy Garcia, Secretary. Randal Schwartz

Former Board Members

Scott Rainey, Michael Dexter, Iris Oren, Benjamin Cox, Candace Ramcharan, Dan Carrere.

References

Sources

* http://www.linuxfund.org/team/ * * http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/03/1845234 * http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/11204.html

External links

Linux Fund
{{Linux kernel Linux organizations Philanthropic organizations based in the United States Organizations established in 1999 1999 establishments in the United States