Hey, I have more money than time or programming skills, and I'd like to help GNU Hurd development specifically -- how can we arrange for this, where can I donate money for GNU Hurd development?

If you're dwelling on such thoughts, here is the answer; here you can donate money for GNU Hurd development.

As its principal idea, FOSS Factory, means to serve as a hub and organizational platform for connecting Free/Open Source Software developers with monetary sponsors. From http://www.fossfactory.org/aboutus.php:

FOSS Factory's mission is to accelerate the advancement of free/open source software by helping people collaborate on the design, funding, and development of innovative software ideas. All software solutions produced using our system are released under free/open source licenses. Our unique model brings the best of innovators from both the entrepreneurial and FOSS worlds together to solve real world problems using the mass resources of the FOSS community.

In very general words, their modus operandi is that the community (including the monetary sponsors) works together with the developers on splitting up tasks into suitable and assessable sub-projects as necessary, and then act as the reviewing instance, deciding on such sub-projects' success (and payment, successively). For more details see their System Overview.

For now, we can assume that the amount of money to be made by working on a GNU Hurd task in this framework is likely to be a symbolic amount only, rather than being representative for the real effort that needs to be invested. Software development is expensive, mostly due to the amount of time that is needed for completing any non-trivial task. Instead, these bounties should be regarded as an attraction/reward, perhaps also simply as a motivation for a developer to focus on one specific problem, and bringing it to completion.

Working on a task and/or suggesting/donating for a new task.

In principle, any Hurd-related development task is applicable (for example, from the GSoC project ideas, or from the open issues list), but it is of course recommendable to match sponsors' ideas with those of the developers and maintainers. For this, if you want to sponsor a project, but don't know which one to choose, or if you want to work on a bounty that is not yet listed on the site, we suggest that you talk to us first, either publically on the bug-hurd mailing list or privately on [email protected], if you prefer.

Both for supporting (donating) as well as claiming a bounty, you have to register at their site, and proceed from there. Please don't hesitate to ask Thomas Schwinge if you need help.

Continue to explore the list of open bounties.

This new installment is in no way meant to depreciate the developers' current, un-paid, efforts. It is also not meant to replace the volunteer work in the long term. Neither is it meant to trick the general FSF fund raising out of a few dollars. Instead, this is simply an additional means, a place for donators to give money for Hurd-specific tasks.

Everyone of the existing crew is eligible to do coding under this bounty system, but we also hope to attract new developers -- in a sense similar to our many years of participation in the Google Summer of Code.

Participation in/use of FOSS Factory's services has explicitly been set up personally by me, Thomas Schwinge; there is no inherent connection to the GNU Hurd maintainers. This also means that each contribution that comes to life out of FOSS Factory's framework is subject to the same rules/review process as any other contribution has always been.

Unless willing to discuss these publically, any concerns, questions, requests regarding this system can always be addressed directly to me.