Speaking for the board, just for the moment -
We understand that some of you want to know more about the actual amount of funding we need to raise at the moment.
A donation of $50 would cover our ongoing server cost for about a month. This includes our infrastructure for our website, mailing lists, code repositories, and file servers. There are no domain-holding costs at the moment as we have long running and very generous sponsors for that:
squeak.org - Dan H.H. Ingalls squeaksource.com - ESUG squeakfoundation.org - Cees de Groot
We do not *need* all that much money per month, which is just as well since we get very little donated. There are *no* frequent, reliable donations at the moment.
Maybe we can change that. Small donations from people that use Squeak a lot, or make a living based on using it, could make a big difference.
During the past 10 years, there was not a single company that has funded us on a regular basis with a larger amount of money. That's why there are no extra badges on our squeak.org website. Once we get our first "gold sponsor," we will definitely let you know. :-)
Marcel's initial email explained why we need to try to get some funding and to build a small buffer in the bank. It's not complicated.
Speaking personally -
Could you maybe elaborate further on *how much* will actually be needed in total?
To run the servers as we do now (ie a fairly minimal system entirely supported by volunteers) we need around $50 a month *plus* the small tithe to SFC, so call it $60/month.
Will the amount of donations have a direct impact on the time my image needs to update etc.?
Yes. If there are no donations we won't have access to servers and your updates will take a long time.
For clarification: Does Hetzner provide a similar no-cost support option to Rackspace or are you talking about an extrapolation of the donations that squeak.org has received in the past? :-)
Apparently not. And in part, relying on the continuing availability of free servers from Rackspace is what caused the problem this time. We did actually put effort into handling this.
And if we *could* raise significant funds? Well, apart from paying bloated salaries to the board members (and for the humour impaired, I'm joking) it would be nice to be able to sponsor some efforts similar to the google summer of code stuff. Or to donate towards costs of running Squeakends/Camp Smalltalk events. Or even to sponsor students, run a bounty list, etc etc.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Useful random insult:- Cackles a lot, but I ain't seen no eggs yet.