I organized (badly) a couple of donation drives for free software at another place I belonged to. The idea being to have a vote for some freeware you use alot, encouraging others to use it, and to donate to it. Whatever project wins gets (hopefully) a big ole pile of money from everyone donating at once at the end of the poll. This lets people become more aware of free alternatives, encourages people who have never donated to go ahead and donate, and maximizes the impact of everyone's donation by lumping it into a pile big enough to buy hardware, instead of just dinner.

People who nominate things should explain why they are worthy of donations. If they are persuasive, then everyone could give together to help some freeware supplier buy a new computer or whatever.

The goals would be:
1. Make sure people know about freeware resources.
2. Make sure people at least consider donating to those resources.
3. If a winner were chosen, then everyone donate money to the same place on the same day to maximize the impact of our collective donations

Clearly at RevTK the first winner would already be chosen as RevTK itself.. But in the interim, we could nominate our other favorite resources for language learning. This serves (as mentioned right above) of letting each other know about the freeware resources, and reminding everyone that donations to freeware projects are really in the end what make people keep doing them. No one doing freeware is doing it for the money, but the plain fact is that when people send you money, they are telling you you did a good job. And there are costs associated with doing any freeware project in that time spent helping us, is time they are not spending making their own money. If RevTK or Anki went away, it would suck, but the fact is servers cost money, and coding takes time. If we did not have the crazy level of effort of Jim Breen, life would suck hard for language learners. AT some point, he will have to stop, and without making a point of sponsoring freeware like this, it might just go away.

So any interest? Any ideas on how to run a poll? Any nominations?

As I said first month's poll winner would already be decided to be RevTK. We could just spend the first month nominating things to be included in the second round in an actual poll. My nomination would be Rikaichan, but I am not eloquent enough to explain just how wonderful this software is.

http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/

That's a great idea.

IMHO, the first 2 donation drives should go for RevTK and Anki. The only problem is to choose which one would go first.

Not saying how it would have to be this way, but when we did this for freeware, we specifically excluded choosing freeware from companies that offered paid versions. Not that their freeware was not useful, but just because they had a direct revenue source from customers.

I have already donated to Anki, and I will be buying his iPod app, so I am not against giving him money if the group decided to.

The only freeware (it would also have to be open-source) I would consider donating to is Anki. However, I'm planning to buy it when I buy my iPhone, and that's more than enough money IMO.

What about EDICT?

What about that one guy that does the subs2srs program?

And what about nest0r and his threads and various links?

I humbly suggest that rather than trying to choose the one worthy project, people just donate to the programs/sites/people they find useful.

resolve Wrote:I humbly suggest that rather than trying to choose the one worthy project, people just donate to the programs/sites/people they find useful.

That's missing the point. Do that, and people who don't already donate, will not donate. There is a reason why the Red Cross does donation drives right after things like the Haiti earthquake. It's not to get donations to help Haiti, they already have the money to do that. It's to fund the ongoing program. People forget to give when they are not reminded. This would be a way to remind them.