On Mar 28, 2004, at 11:21 AM, stéphane ducasse wrote:

> Right now there is no legal structure to collect funds, so 
> people/organization
> cannot give money. I would like to buy Squeak3.7. I think that there 
> is a difference between open-source and paying to get a good 
> distribution. We should invent our own market.

This is extremely vague and probably silly, but would it be at all 
useful to start a sort of "squeak of the month club"?  Anyone who 
wanted to join would pledge, say, $10 or $20 a month to go towards 
squeak-related development, and we would have some kind of voting 
mechanism to allocate the funds to specific projects each month.  
Rationally I realize this isn't much different from a bunch of 
individual $20 donations, but somehow I think people would be more 
likely to participate in something organized than just choose out of 
the blue to send someone a cheque.  And it might motivate us to get a 
structure in place that would allow us to accept larger-scale 
contributions later on...

Do any other open source projects do something similar?

Avi