is it true about donations?

[Robert - eLists <li...@abbacomm.net>]

Is it really true that in all the time spamassassin has been alive that the
SA Team has only recv'd a hundred bucks or so in donations and such?

 - rh

Re: is it true about donations?

[Loren Wilton <lw...@earthlink.net>]

> Robert - eLists wrote:
>> Is it really true that in all the time spamassassin has been alive that 
>> the
>> SA Team has only recv'd a hundred bucks or so in donations and such?

I think this may have been prompted by a misremembering.
I think it was stated a few days ago that the SARE "Donate" Paypal button 
has only collected something like $110 total.

Although I frankly would be a little surprised if the devs have received 
even that much directly, since they don't have a Donate button.  :-)

But as Matt points out, the Devs (and SARE) receive a considerable value in 
donated equipment and bandwidth and hosting services and the like.  But that 
is donated to the project, and isn't anything anyone can take down to the 
corner ice cream store.

        Loren

Re: is it true about donations?

[Matt Kettler <mk...@verizon.net>]

Robert - eLists wrote:
> Is it really true that in all the time spamassassin has been alive that the
> SA Team has only recv'd a hundred bucks or so in donations and such?

I'd say that's about half true. In so far as "donation of cash or items
direct from user to developer's own pocket/home", that's probably pretty
close to true. I can't exactly confirm that, but it's quite plausible. I
don't think any team member has received any kind of substantial income.
Any who have, feel free to correct me for speculating. :)

However, several of the SA developers have at various points in the past
been employed by companies with a commercial interest in SpamAssassin.
I'm not sure if any were directly paid to work on the OSS code, but I
suspect that was the case. (However, we're talking a LONG time ago..
2.32 days)

Also, the project itself has received a lot of hosting donations. While
this isn't of direct benefit to the developers, it does keep the project
from costing the team lots of money out-of-pocket.

Of course, that naturally might lead folks to ask "why does the team
continue to do this?".

Well, I can't speak for any other team members, but my small story goes
like this:

First, scrolling back several years, I'm a software engineer, with a
part time "second hat" of running the DMZ servers (email, www, etc) and
firewalls for a small company of about 70 people. Spam and viruses are
quickly becoming a problem. In my research, I discover MailScanner,
which works with the particular AV product we have a site license for,
and SpamAssassin works with it too. The two tools collectively make my
life substantially easier.

However, neither tool is perfect. So, I spend some of my personal time
on a PC at home creating a few rules, writing a few bits of
documentation, etc. The rules are largely motivated by my own needs. I
need SA to keep spam under control in my network, so I write rules to
improve it. While I'm at it, it costs me nothing to give a copy of that
work to the official tree, so I do. The documentation bits are mostly
humanitarian on my part, athough sometimes they bemuse me as they are
documentaries of my own bunglings through learning how SA works.  (most
notably, the "Writing better rules" section of WritingRules in the wiki
has a lot of this.. Every suggestion in there is as a result of some 
naive mistake I made.)