Pat, I don't think I have the right words to describe how much I appreciate the work that you and everyone else is putting into Slackware. And, with this being an independent, community-based project, the life between "life" and "work" is inevitably blurry, if it's there at all.

I can't suggest a particular payment platform, since it's hardly my field of expertise. But if you have questions about PayPal in particular, I can put you in touch with my girlfriend. She runs a business that frequently receives and makes payments through PayPal.

Whatever platform you choose, please let us know. As far as I'm concerned (and I'm sure I speak for a lot of other folks) it really doesn't need to be merchandise-driven, or purely merchandise-driven, anyway. I like Slackware t-shirts and DVDs and whatnot as much as the next guy, but I'm happy to pitch in just to help you folks do the work that you like. I don't need a t-shirt to remind me of that.

(In fact, considering the incompetence of the folks working at my local post office, I'd rather pay extra than deal with retrieving the t-shirt...)

I remember an old email conversation, probably in the early 2000s, where I suggested the possibility of a Slackware Foundation following the *BSD ways.

Anyway, all the things that have been suggested (Paypal, Patreon, some other crowd funding platform) can be fine for an immediate help. When any of these should be chosen and activated, let all us know. Help will come.

Already on HN at

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17598685

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Same here. I usually download the .iso when there's a new release, too impatient to wait for the dvd arriving. If everyone does that, that's one less thing for Pat to worry about. The dvd costs me around £50 per release, so I'd be happy and willing to pay that into a Paypal account whenever a new release .iso became available, plus one-off donations of whatever I could afford whenever I could afford it.

Having a for-profit deal with handling donations seems like it can run into problems, I'm sure...

I'd like to suggest you give SPI a shot. "Software in the Public Interest" was originally created to handle donations for Debian, and is a fully registered 501(c)(3) in the US (NY). Beyond Debian, it handles other well-known free software projects, such as Arch Linux, FFmpeg, LibreOffice, OpenWRT, and PostgreSQL; there are 45 associated projects currently.

The goal of SPI is to hold FLOSS projects' moneys which can come from any number of sources (donations, hardware sales, whatnot), so that the project can focus on what really matters, while having the bills (for web hosting, buying hardware to support new features, or even plane tickets so you can go to meetups or whatever) get paid. There is an obvious limitation on it being a non-profit, but I do think that having Slackware join SPI would go a long way towards dealing with these issues.

LQ won't let me post a link until I've done at least one post, but the URL is www dot spi-inc dot org

(disclaimer: I am a Debian developer)

5 members found this post helpful.

A lot of comments on reddit/r/linux. Some negative, but mostly supportive.

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/r/linux is somewhat of a... uh... special place.

Yeah, I'm not a reddit member. Just browse there.

If Plasma and KDE5 are becoming so bloated it's a difficulty to maintain then have you considered dropping it also? XFCE is already available and more stable and you already have the GTK2/GTK3 libraries which you need for other programs.

4 members found this post helpful.

This is my first post in years as I moved away from Slackware but as luck (or unluck maybe?) would have it, I set up a new installation a few weeks ago and have been considering switching my other installations back to Slackware.

So to go along with the plethora of funding ideas already here: Pat, would you accept Bitcoin?

Regardless of method, I'd love to donate once something is set up.

This amounts pretty much to a crisis in the Slackware community. It's the kind of thing which, if left unchecked for too much longer, could get a lot harder to deal with in various ways. Pat shouldn't be suffering like this while developing such an incredible project.

I'm glad he said something about it. I hope he posts something soon, even a Paypal link. Or even a Kickstarter should he have different goals he needs to work towards financially. The fact that he is getting next to nothing from the store - people who are continually profiting off his hard graft - is disgraceful. I think the community would only be too happy to step forward and help get Slackware 15.0 off the ground while helping Pat get his feet back on it. And from there we can all move forward into a new, better era for 15.

I look forward to seeing how Pat decides we can help.

2 members found this post helpful.

Saw this on reddit and signed up to add my voice of support. The moment you find your preferred method of accepting donations, I will be among the supporters who contributes, and I hope the users in this thread will all join me.

I know I speak for most of us when I say we lament the way you've found yourself living even while many of us congratulated ourselves for supporting you through the use of this store.

I hope that the metrics you gathered about sales encourages you to lean on this community to support your work, because a great deal of us value it tremendously, and are more than willing to vote for the work we value with our money.

I hope that you feel encouraged by the response of the community, and I hope to see this community come together to support the work we rely on and allow you to pursue your passions without fear for your family's wellbeing.

Please do not hesitate to announce your chosen donation route. None of us can guarantee that you will earn a living income from it, but many of us want to see you succeed and thrive, and we will contribute to help make that happen.

4 members found this post helpful.

+1 to get out of the "physical" business.

I donated some money back in 2016. via PayPay, I always thought it gets directly to Pat (thus the donation and not the purchase of merchandise), but now I checked the receipt and it says "Slackware Store", damn it

Please setup any kind of donation mechanism for you personally, and I'll gladly support. And sincerely, it's 2018, time to move on from a store concept into something more reliable, a foundation, consulting service, whatever.

I can't believe that in America people with such skills and knowledge live in such conditions. Once you get on your feet, consider moving to Europe. In Germany you'll live like a king and still have time for your business.

4 members found this post helpful.

Gentlemen, please take a look there: https://www.patreon.com/taylorotwell/overview

This honorable gentleman is the BDFL of Laravel, a MVC framework written in PHP. A thing used by many companies to make custom sites.

Now take a look up to his Diamond Tier, worth $2500 monthly.

Did you observe what is included at max? A partnership logo on Laravel's site, a dedicated private chat/forum with direct access to developers and ONE hour of live support monthly given by BDFL himself.

That's the power of companies. The power of thousands of small companies doing business on top of that Laravel framework.

I believe that same can do Slackware. Yeah, it cannot challenge RHEL on servers, BUT on office it can have its own niche.

What lacks Slackware to be competitive in office?

I believe that Slackware does not lack something over-sized like Plasma5 or "controversial" like systemd.

I believe that it lacks just the ability to properly communicate with other computers from a mixed Windows/Linux network. It lacks the LinuxPAM and Kerberos support.

1 members found this post helpful.

I am an admin of Platinum Linux Non Profit Servers, which is a project that uses Slackware since its foundation in 1997. We may provide hosting and system maintenance for the Slackware websites, shop etc., if it helps your case Patrick.

Greetings,

Zuzanna

7 members found this post helpful.