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At this time those are the only published avenues for helping Pat. If you cannot use those methods, please be patient until Pat establishes other options.
Also Pat's reply about paying by bitcoin (don't!).
If you have suggestions for helping Pat, please contribute in this thread.
The consensus action in this thread is people cancelling orders and subscriptions from the Slackware Store. Perhaps that will change but the general opinion is trust has been lost.
I will try to keep this post updated with alternatives to support Slackware. Somebody please PM when that happens.
To everybody: I had no idea I was disturbing hornets with my original post. All I wanted was to support Pat.
Pat: Your post required courage and humility. I think this thread is evidence that you are important to many people and your work is much appreciated. Every distro that is worth anything has loyal users and followers. Slackware is no different. The flow of this thread indicates all of us want you to do well and to give your family a big hug from all of us. Please take care of yourself and your family. Get back on your feet. And remember to breath.
IANAL or an accountant, but as far as I understand gifts are not taxable.
I bought two Slackware T-shirts a short while ago (happily waiting for their arrival).
You could pay for a Slackware subscription which supports Slackware *and* you get a nice installation DVD when Slackware 15.0 is released. I have a Slackware subscription.
You could pay for a Slackware subscription which supports Slackware *and* you get a nice installation DVD when Slackware 15.0 is released. I have a Slackware subscription.
In my original post: "Yes, I can buy something, but I don't need or want anything. I just want to donate."
I am holding a pre-paid card and want to empty the balance at the store. I'd mail him the card or stuff cash in his pocket if I could.
If donations no longer are possible then I'll have to buy something. I never thought just giving people money would be so challenging!
I told them to take it down or I'd suspend the DNS for the store.
I've been mulling over exactly how to tell you all this, and I guess this is as good a place as any. The store has been ripping me off horribly, and I'm very nearly broke. I have no evidence that they've ever done anything with donations besides line their own pockets. I've not been paid any money by them in two years. That was upon the 14.2 release (and followed another long period of time with no income). The 14.2 release generated nearly $100K in revenue. The store gave me $15K, and later said that I was "overpaid".
When I agreed to set up the store, it was structured as a company where they owned 60%, and my wife and I owned 40%. I had not yet escaped California and would have quickly gone broke there with a house underwater had I not taken the deal. And 60% seemed fair, since the idea was that the company would be providing health insurance, paying for the production of the goods, and handling shipping and related customer service. And when my daughter was born and needed surgery and continuing medical attention I could hardly jeopardize our insurance in the days before the ACA. I was between a rock and a hard place like many residents of the US. Since then, the store has ceased to provide any benefits, and shouldn't even be getting a 50/50 split in my opinion, much less looting the coffers for 81+% (anything they want to spend money on is an expense, apparently, while any expenses I have to support the actual project come out of the peanuts they toss me). I only found out about how bad it really was last year when I finally managed to get some numbers out of them. I thought the sales were just that bad, and was really rather depressed about it. Another side note - the ownership of the 60% portion of the store changed hands behind my back. Nobody thought they needed to tell me about this. At that point I'd say things got considerably worse for me.
Still not sure how to move forward, but I have some hope that the community might think that my work is and has been worth supporting. If at all possible I'd like to get away from replicating physical media which seems to be a lost cause. T-shirts? Well, maybe, but I don't see that providing a reasonable income either. I'm wondering how Patreon would do. It would at least be better than nothing, which is where I am now.
Through all of this I have continued to work hard towards getting Slackware 15.0 released because I believe it will be by far the best release we've ever had, and because I'm dedicated to my work and the community that uses it. I've never really been in this for the money. At any given juncture (including now) I've had numerous opportunities that would support me and my family far better and would provide us with the things that we need rather desperately. I mean, I'm sitting here in a house with a giant hole in the roof, a broken door sealed with duct tape, and a failed air conditioning condenser that I can't afford to fix, my wife has been driving on a spare tire for weeks, my teeth need serious attention again, and I only just got a machine here with UEFI for the first time (bought a used machine... really out of my budget but it had to be done).
I'm open to suggestions at this point. As far as Slackware 15.0 goes, I've been testing PAM and Kerberos here and have given quite some thought to trying to get them merged (or at least in /testing) so that we can have proper support for Active Directory and NFS. Plasma 5 has been a consideration as well, although frankly it's grown much larger than GNOME was back when I decided that should be spun off for third party maintenance. If that's going in, we really need to analyze which dependencies would not be used outside of Plasma and stick all of those in the KDE series. I'm as tired of the pollution of the L series as the rest of you are.
"I did this 'cause Linux gives me a woody. It doesn't generate revenue."
-- Dave '-ddt->` Taylor, announcing DOOM for Linux
Pat lives in Minnesota and not California. If he protects his privacy I am sure he doesn't hand out personal mailing addresses to strangers. Perhaps a weekend road trip would be a nice mini vacation to throw some Bens his way.
Side comment: Kind of a blow that the lowest priced shipping option is priority. Expensive way to receive "stuff."
Side comment: Nice web site design. No JavaSh-t! No overlays! Simple forms! Sanity!
I'm wondering how Patreon would do. It would at least be better than nothing, which is where I am now.
Oh man, I'm sorry to hear about your financial issues, Mr. Volkerding! I would be very happy to donate to a financial vehicle that gets the money directly to you and your family. I had no idea that the store was ripping you off.
Yeah maybe abandon physical media and go with a donation system for you of some type. At your convenience please keep us updated about this.
No joking or kidding around. If you PM me here at LQ with a snail mail address, even a P.O. box in your home town, I'll be happy to send a Ben. Actually two Bens - I am so long freakin' overdue to send you something.
I ordered from the store more than an hour ago. I am saddened and angered by your report.
I don't need DVDs or CD as I can download them from the web. I just want you to have something in return. I am sooo tempted to drive to your house and stick an envelope behind the screen door -- if I only knew where!
Whatever you decide with respect to PAM and Kerberos doesn't matter. You have proven countless times that you give a hoot and know what needs to be done. Few people in this arena can match all you have accomplished.
Dammit, hang in there! You are so valuable to free/libre software I don't know where to begin explaining that to anybody. And give the family a big hug!
I ordered from the store more than an hour ago. I am saddened and angered by your report.
My feelings exactly! I feel foolish supporting the store given the fact that little or no money is going to Pat.
I look forward to being able to support our maintainer in a real way.
I was going to buy a t-shirt. I would rather send that money direct to you, Pat. Buying the t-shirt when little of the revenue goes in the right direction is putting the cart before the horse. I love Slackware too much to see what is, in effect, an injustice taking place.
Last edited by Lysander666; 07-23-2018 at 03:52 PM.
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