Would you donate to open source, non-profits, or Occupy Wall Street?

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Would you donate to open source, non-profits, or Occupy Wall Street?
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Opensource.com

186 votes tallied
An open source project
44% (82 votes)
An Occupy Wall Street camp
16% (29 votes)
A non-profit
40% (75 votes)

What are you most likely to donate to first?

We've had an interesting conversation on how the open source movement relates to  Occupy Wall Street. I recently saw a headline that Occupy Wall Street was able to raise $150,000 by mid-October and it got me thinking, would you be willing to donate money or time to the Occupy Wall Street movement?

But I wanted to take it a step further. If you had to choose between an open source project, a non-profit, or Occupy Wall Street, who would you give your money or time to?

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Jason Hibbets
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Jason Hibbets is a Community Director at Red Hat with the Digital Communities team. He works with the Enable Architect, Enable Sysadmin, Enterprisers Project, and Opensource.com community publications.
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10 Comments

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Kartik Subbarao | October 25, 2011
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I think another poll choice would be useful: "Other political movement/party". There are likely to be people who would prefer to donate to non-OWS political movements/parties over donating to an open source project, non-profit, or OWS.

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Jason Hibbets | October 25, 2011
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Kartik,

That is a good suggestion. I was torn between keeping it generic or getting specific. With Occupy Wall Street in the news lately, I was curious if people would donate to it. Rather than going with my first draft (would you donate to Occupy Wall Street, yes/no), I wanted to see what people would choose if they had to choose between three options. And I wanted to limit the choices to make it easier to think through.

The initial results are interesting, but not surprising for this audience. Thanks for your feedback.
Jason

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JamesJackson | October 26, 2011
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Donate your time or your money to a charity, especially during these hard times. I like to donate my time and money to Nourishing NYC. They feed, educate, and advocate for those in need regardless of race or gender. Check them out http://www.nourishingnyc.org. Tell your friends :)

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Patrick Anderson | October 27, 2011
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This is a great opportunity, but we haven't put enough effort into designing an Organizational Form that can overgrow Capitalism, and so the money is likely to be spent of this-and-that until it is exhausted instead of being the seed of the world we envision.

Here is my proposal:

We need to change why we Invest and how we Share Revenue.

1.) Product is Investor's Return: This is an Investment strategy that uses Product as the ROI, and so requires the Investors be the Users themselves.

2.) Profit is Payer Investment: This is a Revenue-Sharing strategy that Invests some % of Profit for the User who paid it.

3.) Investments are Commitments of Sources and Skills: This is a way to gather the Land and Capital needed (those committing Sources would relinquish ownership to others in a group targeting some specific Product) and also to insure the diverse work needed would be accomplished without need to fight the "simultaneous coincidence of wants" trouble with typical 'late' barter.

By committing Skills *before* production, we can trade Labor between ourselves, and never need to trade oranges with apples, since the co-owners of the Sources of those Products would own their % of the Product *already*, even before they are produced. I call this "Predictive Barter" - where we Swap Skills early instead of attempting to Swap Products *late*.

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Geno | October 28, 2011
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I'm trying to get an Open Source, Non-Profit, Occupy Movement application off the ground. Maybe some of your fine visitors might be able to assist?

<a href="http://www.occupytogether.org/2011/10/20/working-group-proposal-for-communication-networking/comment-page-1/#comment-6812">This</a> is a direct link to my proposal.

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Jack | November 5, 2011
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Hi Geno...I have a very similar vision I've been working on conceptually for many years, and would be willing to help. I have owned and operated a small dev company since 1995. We will need help, but I'm game. Please contact me if you're still interested. hinmanj at hinman dot com.

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T | November 1, 2011
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The Occupiers have enough Union, Soros, and Acorn money, but I repeat myself.

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ChrisL | November 1, 2011
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I would give to a non-profit, such as my church, Red Cross, etc. first. I have donated to open source as a way to say thank you for applications that were beneficial to me. Occupy Wall Street Camp won't see a dime ...

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Jason Hibbets | November 2, 2011
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ChrisL - I agree and am in the same boat. I'm not really bought into the Occupy Wall Street thing yet. I like being able to see the efficiency of how non-profits are able to use the money that's donated.

Jason

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Ron Heimbecher | November 7, 2011
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Three difficult choices, to be sure.
Non-profits, especially small ones, are always in desperate need of in-kind assistance (volunteers) almost more than ready cash. I've given time to non-profits for a number of years, doing everything from grunt work to serving as an officer or board of directors member.

I think the best way I personally can help out Open Source projects is to talk them up in any way I can. Use them, blog about them, give presentations on them -- and provide appropriate feedback. I can code, but not like the wizards who do this stuff every day. I'm damned good at requirements, however, from a long IT career.

Occupy Wall Street is harbinger of the future, the beginning of American Spring. My best possible support for them is through words and actions... and a little political fiction B^).

The main players in party politics have grown useless. Contributions to either party are a waste of both time and money -- IMHO.

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