Query results: October, 2007

Our “Keep Us Going” fund drive for 2007/2008 has ended yesterday. We have raised just a little over €320 over one month, and we’d like to express our sincere thanks to all those who donated.

Surely, this is a far cry from the €2450 we need to fill our yearly budget. But it still covers the biggest part of our web-hosting-related costs. It has also given us a fair amount of visibility - encouraging us to plan a budget one year ahead, and making our accounting public. As for the rest, we can probably finance half of it ourselves, the way we’ve been running so far. The remaining part is still to be found.

So, thank you. Being on the receiving side is a strange experience, when you see money coming from donors part of community projects themselves rolling on budgets smaller than lunch money. Fund-driving is hard, especially when your audience is made mainly of students or computer enthusiasts. So it’s particularly moving when somebody you’ve only known under a username comes up to you after a conference and says: “here’s €50″.

We keep going - we’re crazy.

It already takes some energy to explain that you are into computing, but not exactly programming, when introducing yourself to strangers. Add to this, the concept of free software, and you have to fight your way out of all the stereotypes.
Now, if your listener is still with you, explain that you don’t write software at all, and that you work for a non-profit: you are instantly labeled as a naive well-meaning weirdo.
The final touch is explaining that even after eighteen months of hard work, six of which almost-full-time, you still haven’t earned a cent, but you still firmly believe that your non-profit-based activity has a viable business model. Voilà: you have been promoted to the status of “one of these crazies”.

So yes, we are crazy. We still believe the free software community needs some clear, wide-audience marketing (and not just pretty logos). We still believe we can make a real difference. We know the value of €327 worth of trust from anonymous individuals. May we suggest that your organization sponsor us, too?

So thanks again, we keep going, and let’s now make the most of what we have.

Sincerely,

Olivier, for the GNU/Linux Matters team.

We have just released a complete translation of our showcase of PC vendors pre-installing GNU/Linux: LinuxPréinstallé.com .

In the past week, we have added a handful of vendors to our list upon the suggestions of visitors - most of whom found us on digg. Also, links towards the three LinuxPreloaded sites have started to appear here and there on GetGNULinux.org and translations. Our latest website is preparing to go a long way ;-)

A small update about our link buttons:

• the webmasters of non-white backgrounds websites will be happy to learn that we have put transparency on all non-rectangular buttons. This is a compromise (IE6 does not support PNG transparency at all) we should probably have made a little earlier, apologies!
• We have released a smaller version of our “Vista dismissed” button which should appear less intrusive:
• Upon demand of our Hispanic Linux community friends, we have quickly set-up a Spanish banner to standard dimensions.

This is another opportunity to remind anyone that we are looking for help regarding link buttons. Other communities do much better regarding button design (1,2) and our link buttons pages could be much faster and better organized. If anyone is willing to help, please let us know!