Celejar wrote: > > I do understand and agree with this, but my point was that we (at least > the more helpful of us) on this list are perfectly willing to freely > give of our time to help others, so why would we (at least those of us > fortunate enough to have disposable income to spare) not be willing to > give of our money as well to help others who need it?
That's easy: time is much more effective than money in this context. If you answer a question on this mailing list, it is recorded and can be searched; hundreds or thousands of people can be helped. If you fix a bug in a major package, millions of people will be helped. If you donate the money that you make in an hour to postage and media for DVDs or USB sticks, somewhere between a fraction of a person and a couple of hundred will be helped -- for an average US income, about 2 USB sticks. Money is great, but it is needed in business-sized quantities. Any individual person with skills makes the community better off by answering questions and fixing bugs than they would by donating the equivalent time in money. As a corollary, if you can spend a couple of hours convincing a business that runs Debian to donate some money, that's probably an excellent use of your time. -dsr-
