[PLUG] Linux Fund loses its funding source

[William A Morita]

http://community.linux.com/community/07/04/02/1356254.shtml?tid=11

ChangeLog: Linux Fund loses its funding source


Thursday April 05, 2007 (01:54 PM GMT)

By: Linux.com staff

Linux Fund <http://www.linuxfund.org/> , an organization founded to fund
open source projects through financing from affinity credit cards, is losing
its affinity card provider. Linux Fund cardholders received official notice
from the Bank of America recently that the program is being discontinued.
According to the letter, "the provider of your Linux Fund credit card and
Linux Fund recently agreed to discontinue the existing credit card program
effective June 30, 2007." 

David Mandel, executive director of LinuxFund.org, says, "Linux Fund and
Bank of America (formerly MBNA) agreed to terminate the Linux Fund card a
few months ago, but we could not say anything because of non-disclosure
agreements we signed with MBNA.

"Many people have asked if Linux Fund is going to offer a card through
another bank or if I know of an alternative to the Linux Fund credit card
that funds FOSS. I cannot say anything about Linux Fund's future with any
other bank; and I do not know of any alternative to the Linux Fund credit
card. I suspect there aren't any. I can say that the banking industry has
changed and it is much more difficult to set up a program like the Linux
Fund card than it was in 1999 when we started the program."

LinuxFund was born in 1999 and hyped at the 2000 LinuxWorld in New York
City. After falling into a period of disarray and neglect, it was
revitalized <http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/07/22/1553240>
in 2005, and channeled funds into important FOSS projects such as Blender,
Debian Linux, Gentoo, and OpenSSH <http://www.linuxfund.org/1/projects.php>
.

"Linux Fund will continue to exist, although it will look very different
than it does today," Mandel says. "Linux Fund is hoping to be able to
provide the open source community with the information and tools they need
to intelligently channel funds and other resources to open source projects."


- Bill Morita
wamorita at hevanet.com