Any tips on asking my employer to "donate" to Trisquel?
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At my workplace (a tutoring center) we have been using Trisquel on 4 out of ~10 laptops since shortly after the beginning of this year. I think it would be good if my company would send some money to Trisquel, since we get value out of using Trisquel, but so far I have only mentioned doing so in passing. I'm not sure what the best approach is for how to explain why a company should send money to Trisquel. I don't really think of it as a donation, since we do get something in return (Trisquel, the operating system), even though we would get that regardless of paying. Of course, money is important for running the Trisquel website servers and funding development and bug fixes, but I'm not sure exactly what happens to the money sent to Trisquel.
Our laptops that don't run Trisquel currently run Windows 10. It seems like we can't upgrade to Windows 11 officially on most of the laptops, but we are investigating workarounds to upgrade anyway. We probably want to keep Windows on at least a couple of the laptops for the occasional exam that won't work on Trisquel, though I've only seen that once in the 3 years I've worked here. We have also had one case where a district blocked all devices reporting "Linux" in the user-agent, which wasn't too difficult to work around once I realized what the issue was [1], but it was good to have Windows devices while I was investigating the issue (and knowing that the page did work on Windows was helpful too).
Even if we don't switch every device to Trisquel, it seems likely that we will have Trisquel running on a couple more devices in the next couple of months (though there's still some printing issues that probably need to be resolved first). I thought maybe it would be a good idea to look at how much Windows 11 would have cost on those extra devices, but it's difficult to tell how much it would cost because it could range from $0 if the upgrades are possible to hundreds of dollars if we have to buy new copies. Maybe I could look at the donate page [2] and find the median donation and then suggest sending that much times the number of computers.
I'm not sure how much money I should suggest that my company send, or how I should explain why, but I plan to do so anyway eventually. Maybe you can give me some advice?
[1] https://codeberg.org/JacobK/Ansible-repo-for-Gideon-Garland/src/branch/main/data/%7Ba6c4a591-f1b2-4f03-b3ff-767e5bedf4e7%7D.json
[2] https://trisquel.info/en/donate
I'm not sure exactly what happens to the money sent to Trisquel.
If more funds would significantly help Trisquel, it would be good if a developer answers. Trisquel's funding used to be a hot topic on this forum. In the early 2010s, the donation system and then the associate member program were put in place, with some level of success. (After my replies on https://trisquel.info/forum/trisquel-funds I remember improving the commands and regularly updating a Wiki page with the state of Trisquel's funds, but I cannot find it anymore, if it still exists.) The idea at that time was to have Rubén Rodríguez Pérez (aka quidam, Trisquel's founder) live off Trisquel so that he could dedicate himself to the project. He ended up hired by the FSF and Trisquel's development adopted the LTS rhythm (until 2013, a new version of Trisquel was released every six months!). But quidam is not working for the FSF anymore. And maybe Ark74 would like to dedicate himself to Trisquel. I do not know... but it would be nice to know, because such a perspective, if realistic, could certainly motivate more donations, especially regular donations (that help foresee the financial future) through the membership program.
> I remember improving the commands and regularly updating a Wiki page with the state of Trisquel's funds, but I cannot find it anymore, if it still exists.
Thank you: I updated the numbers. What catches my attention the most is that, seven years ago, the total amount donated in US dollars dropped and never went back to the levels seen before. In the older data (not displayed), there were consistently more than US$ 2000 donated per year.
I am a translator!
I have setup a monthly donation by bank transfer. I selected this method because it does not involve any fee and I don't have to remember every month, but then it does not appear on Trisquel website, so I guess it is not counted here. I may not be the only one.
Let me share my personal perspective,
A project requires resources to operate properly. Rubén has done a great job for over 20 years; even so, I think it would be a mistake to take that for granted, its longevity suggests many challenges have been overcome.
As a primarily community driven project, Trisquel depends on community support to keep moving forward. I've seen small companies provide support over time, which is good, as they can gain mutual benefit from having a reliable distro to use.
I've also seen people donate what they would have paid for a license fee, an understandable approach even for those outside the Free Software ecosystem. Another approach is to allocate some fraction of the "maintenance" budget to make a recurrent (monthly, quarterly, annually) donation, aligned with your employer maintenance budget.
It may not provide custom support, but it does help ensure the project's continuity.
Whether it's me (doing development work) or someone else, having funds to rely on will always help sustain the next 20 years of Trisquel.
Regards.