Donating to Slackware
 

I want to donate money to slackware.com. I cannot find a donation link.

Yes, I can buy something, but I don't need or want anything. I just want to donate. :)

Possible?

Edit: Dead link? https://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/store/slackdonation

End of original post.

===============================

Edit:

This has become a long thread. If you are unaware, this post by Pat is the reason.

If you are new to this thread and want to donate to Pat, there are two ways to help:

Patrick's PayPal Link

Snail Mail at P.O. Box 172, Sebeka, MN 56477

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.

If you want to do likewise, please send an email to info@store.slackware.com or sales@store.slackware.com.

Several online news sources have posted the story. For example:

itwire

lwn.net

Youtube (5:22)

Reddit

Pro-Linux.de (German)

Linux Magazine (German)

Distrowatch

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.

interesting, the button is gone.
it was on the shop page
it was there some days ago, I now for sure.
hm.......
??

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. :)

https://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/...v_arg&mv_pc=35

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! :)

T shirts came today. :)

Cash in his pocket. :hattip:

Did you try the contact page? https://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/...VEVWDH&mv_pc=6

Perhaps send PV a PM on the DL (I couldn't resist). :)

Perhaps this sentence on the store site could be revised?

You will receive new releases of Slackware approximately once every six months.

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

Cash. Aaahhh! :D

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! :banghead:

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.

OMFG !

Pat --

Do you have a PayPal Acct ?

If you do have one, please post it someplace conspicuous !

Thanks !

-- kjh

EDIT: This is Pat's PayPal Link so it is handy: https://paypal.me/volkerdi

Pat!

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!

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.

Pat,

* Patreon might work. PayPal should work. Post links on the slackware web site. Ask for contributions.

* Rent a local P.O. box. Post the address at the slackware web site. Ask for contributions.

* Post the specs and costs to this forum and the slackware web site what kind of computer equipment you need. Ask for contributions.

* Get bids on the roof, door, and condenser repairs. Post the cost. Ask for contributions.

* Do not be embarrassed to ask for contributions. You maintain one of the best operating systems on the planet. All of us are in your debt!

* Take care of yourself and your family. 15.0 can wait.

Wow! That's incredibly disheartening to hear. The way some people treat others nowadays is getting pretty despicable. I'd love a paypal (maybe just your volkerdi at $YOUKNOWWHAT dot com email) or similar option to send you some immediate relief and I'd welcome the idea of a patreon or something similar where a more steady income could be generated for you. If you provide us the way, I'm sure you'll see the support.

I do have to say, I hope you find a way to continue selling Slackware merchandise (especially the clothing options). I love having Slackware swag available. But I'd also understand if you decided to completely do away with the merchandise considering how this last one has turned out.

I've used Slackware for almost twenty years, and only these last two I had enough stability at work to afford a yearly donation. I'm really pissed to read that they're ripping you off, Pat.

If you set up a Patreon or a Liberapay account, I'll be there every month. It's the least I can do. And I'll be happy to do it.

Joey Hess (ex-Debian developer, now writing software applications in his beloved Haskell) has a Patron page at

https://www.patreon.com/joeyh

As you will see, he is not too happy with recent changes to Patreon and has switched to another service instead...

https://liberapay.com/joeyh/

His funding level is ridiculously small (total $150 per week reading the comments). I imagine that Patron/Librepay can cope with the higher volume that would be generated from the Slackware community.

Alien Bob of course has a Paypal donation link on his blog, perhaps such a link would generate a short term infusion of cash if one could be placed at a prominent location. This post is bound to generate short term publicity given the proximity to the 25th birthday changelog.

Theo de Raadt (leader of the OpenBSD project) had problems paying the electricity bill for his server collection some years ago and asked for donations. The result was the setting up of a proper foundation &c - they had no form of corporate existence up until then. Talking of OpenBSD, they recently decided to stop doing the optical media.

Not sure how it works in the open source/free software world, but is it possible to make an application to a foundation for a grant to cover part of the development work for the release, or at least for capital to fund development and test machines?

PS: I must also express my surprise at this situation - I had no idea of the financial situation.

Wow, i thought the store was something you did yourself. Thats why i have a subscription and order T-shirts... damn.

I‘m in agreement with others. Please post some way for donations and ill send you what I can.

Kr
Melke

Speaking of T-shirts and other merchandise, i'd love to contribute to Slackware by buying some items... however, there's an ethical problem for me, that as i'm based in the UK, it costs more for shipping than it does for the merchandise itself... I feel like if i bought a t-shirt i'd be supporting FedEx or UPS more than i would the actual Slackware project.

I noticed a few years back, Patrick has a cafepress page with some t-shirts which is just the "flippy logo", would it be possible for something like this to be updated, with the other merch available on the slackware store? such as the normal slackware logo polo shirts, baseball caps etc. As it would mean i wouldn't have to pay extortionate shipping fees! And i would happily buy a number of things.

Pat,

In response to your posting, I am pulling out my subscription of the DVD from the store.
And hope you could setup paypal account to accept donation.

I did that after reading Pat's post. I want money that I donate to go to Pat.

Pat. - I'm in accord with the others - I will gladly participate in any scheme where a recurring donation will keep it possible for you to keep developing Slackware. When you decide on a mechanism, post it where the members of the forum can find it, and I'm sure it will be used.

I personally like the subscription DVD's when they arrive, but then I liked it when the media were produced by Walnut Creek or Wind River, too. I've ordered hats and shirts, too, and I liked them. But, it doesn't sound like I'm ordering more for awhile.

Let us know how we can help.

How is that done?

I sent an e-mail today to info@store.slackware.com and asked them to cancel my subscription.

Wow! This is incredibly disheartening, Pat. I never bought stuff from the store, I only ever donated because I thought that you'd get more money. Your work is definitely worth supporting.

Thanks for letting us know, I can imagine it was not an easy decision to go public with this story.

My suggestion would be to immediately publish the same information on slackware.com together with a donation link (PayPal or whatever).
When the story goes mainstream, I believe people will turn to slackware.com looking for a way to support the project financially.

I've just been donating whenever a new version of Slackware is released, so I'm definitely not happy to hear about this situation. I don't mind redoing my previous donations as long as the money is going to Pat (and it's under his control).

I've had a running subscription for a lot of years I will cancel. I only wished to support you and didn't need the disks. Please let us know how to help support the project and maybe you also.
Don

I could use a couple more T-shirts if you choose to produce them. My family used to work in silk-screening, mugs, other custom stuff - it's not difficult to go somewhere and get that stuff printed in small orders, or in bulk (but obviously there's the up-front costs and the storage, then mailing the merchandise, etc.)

I cancelled my DVD subscription, I'll be donating directly when a proper way is set up.

I would absolutely join patreon or whatever if you go that route.

My business runs completely on slackware, and I was stunned to hear this was the financial situation.

I agree with everyone else, please, please set up some means for getting funds directly to you,
I know I'll donate to reflect the value as I am sure many others will.

In addition to the others mentioned, GoFundMe has worked well for other people I've donated to in
the past, and they do take business donations.

I was able to "cancel" my order today. I had not yet received an email confirmation of my order this afternoon. So I dumped the remainder of the pre-paid card elsewhere. That purchase succeeded and there are no funds now for the store order. (One reason I love pre-paid cards -- zero is zero! :))

I still would like a Slackware mousepad Pat. Now with this news, a t-shirt too. Let us know if you decide to sell merchandise elsewhere. :)

Bad people. People should not treat others like this and expect not to suffer consequences. Hopefully the store owners suffer with all of the cancellations. Vote with our feet and our wallets and purses.

Cancelling my subscription. Thieving rip-off f***ers!
Set up a Paypal account, Pat. Eric has one, that's how I donate to him when I can afford it.

Cancelled my subscription today as of today

Pat,

Very sorry to hear about this! My thoughts and prayers go to you and your family!

A few thoughts:
1) Setup a paypal business account in the name of Slackware (that you control)
2) Via paypal account, setup the option for "recurring payments", this is the same as subscriptions, I do this on our site for "members". You could do the same. Keep merchandise only for those who are Members and for new releases...or ditch the merchandise.
3) setup a donate button for PayPal
4) setup a gofundme account for the house repairs, although with the above setup you may not need it
5) Benefit to the above is, you control it, patreon has a habit of changing the terms to frequently.
6) Place the links on Slackware.com to the above options.
7) Increase Slackware transparency by posting annual Profit/Loss, or Donation/Expenses lists, then have a "wishlist" etc...
8) ask the community to step up and assist with the above things. WE are here for you as you have been here for us.
9) Trust that all of this happens for a reason that will make you, Slackware and the community even stronger!

PS: I will PM you links to see how it looks on our site.
PSS: Consider legal action if there is documented proof of this theft/deception etc...

I sent my email to sales@store.slackware.com. I'll send another to info,etc. Just to make sure.
EDIT:
I hope they "SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE."
:mad:

Good tip. I will do the same. Thanks for the heads-up.

Wow - what a punch in the gut. I hope an account can be setup with PayPal, Patreon or something that gets donations directly to Patrick.

I like the wish list idea. :)

awful news. will be monitoring this thread for an update with how to contribute.

:(

I think blender has a nice setup where there are multiple subscription donation options with paypal.
https://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment/

Patrick you are a good person and you didn't deserve to be mistreated so badly. I think this story needs to get out. I hope you do what is required for you and your family to survive comfortably.

Edit: I think it would be fine if you got out of the physical media business.

Agreed. Other issues aside, the physical media business is dying anyway. You're better off just giving away physical media and charging for service. But that market is already so dominated by the big enterprise players.

I've always seen Slackware's greatest advantage to be as an educational tool. One only needs to look at Slackware and its tools, almost all written in shell script, to gain an understanding of what it means to build a Unix-like system from the ground up.

I could almost see Slackware.com being rebranded as the Slackware Foundation, or something like that. It could be set up as a registered charity or non-profit to promote education in Linux, and free OS development in general. After paying Pat's salary, the remainder of the funds (if any) could go towards those efforts.

It could then be fully funded by donations, and with charity/nonprofit status, Pat could get a tax break and donors to the project could get a tax receipt to be used for their own tax deductions.

My small business runs on Slackware as well. I'd be happy to pay double or more than what I pay now in the Slackware store. I and many others have our own selfish (and selfless) reasons to make sure Slackware does not die due to financial constraints.

This present situation is absolutely unacceptable. I think we as a community can agree on that. We need to do something about it. As soon as I see a legit way to donate, I will.

I havent used slackware since about 2000/01, the address was listed as concord,ca. Which was why I used it. Learned a lot from Pat's contributions. I saw the address in the other post listed as brentwood, which is 10 min away... but that's the store address... I don't have much, but I'm available to help pat, I can give you time and/or physical assistance.

Here I'm, a happy user of Slackware and really feel bad hearing your story Mr. Volkerding. When you have decided about the donation stuff, I will definitely support you and Slackware. Thank you for the hard-work for Slackware even during on your hard time.

I agree with the others. Pat should create an avenue for donations and let us know what it is.

I express my sympathy to Pat about how he and Slackware have been treated and my outrage to those who betrayed his trust.

Luckily, I haven't given the store any business as I wasn't able to afford it. Now that I can, I'm also very happy to support Pat and Slackware once the channel to do so is in place.

Pat, your situation is unimaginable and unacceptable; we can fix this and need
to do so immediately. You work hard and earn every cent that is payed in the
name of Slackware. Along with the recent attention from the 25th anniversary
this information needs to go out to the wider audience. What about the Linux
Foundation? Could they show some support for the worlds oldest distro?

That seems like a useful choice. Personally, with the current situation I'd
rather not have any 3rd party. I want my sawbucks directly in the man's hand.

There already is a publicly listed PO Box. I'm not going to spill it. That is
Pat's decision to make.

Pat, if that PO Box is secure and under your control I am ready to send you
payment for Slackware; right now!

Dafuq?

Well, the subscription will only kick in if Mr. Volkerding provides images for that store to create them, correct? (If not correct, I'll jump on the "stop subscription" bandwagon as well.)

IIRC, the cost for the DVD was $60. That's $5/month or $1.25 a week. I'm willing to spend that on a annual basis independent of a release or not. (OK, I'd expect an eventual release; come on.)

I'm also a forgetful lazy *bleep*; I'd like to set something up that I don't have to monitor closely.

Figure out how to set up ways we can pay you and pin the thread telling us how to do so here (I assume LQ isn't against that sort of thing).

EDIT: WOW. Old man memory kicking in. $39.95 for the DVD subscription? (Actually hit the store page.) I'm willing to pay $60 a year to support you. That would at least be a constant revenue flow.

I've been using Slackware for my private needs since 1996 (Slackware 3.0 - first release on CD-ROM) and my first business-grade Slackware server was based on 3.6. My little contribution ever since was to buy the official CD/DVD on every official release through some relatives I have in the States.
Reading Patrick's post I felt a little confused about why it's all running through intermediaries and sorry about the actual (resulted) situation, which is not something one wouldn't expect - business as usual.
Given the nature of the Slackware project and the resource(s) that stays at its core, I found all I had to suggest myself in keithpeter's post (pointless to repeat/rewrite):
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5882782

dear Pat,

as others have already said, please provide us with a PayPal (or bank?) account to which we can donate directly to you. I feel like an idiot for thinking the (however modest) donations I made "to the Slackware project" (as put on the store) go straight to you and your family.