The Userbase of GNU/Linux is Growing, Investments in the FSF Grow Too (in Spite of Microsofters Inciting and Slandering It)
The FSF's expenses are close to 2 million dollars a year
LESS than a day ago we said that donations to the FSF had reached 89k (US dollars) and now, hours later, it's at 101k.
It's the year's time of giving and today we gave money to some charities we've long supported. 2 days ago we wrote: If You Support Free - is in Freedom/Libre - Software, Then Support the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If the funding goal is reached, it can cover about a third of the FSF's expenses for the whole year, assuming the office rent in Boston totalled at around 5-10k a month.
Total donations to the FSF (for the winter holidays) can probably reach 200k by the end of the year. Less than the salary of the SFC's chief (a greedy splinter group that heckles the FSF).
Right now in IRC we're discussing Microsoft's threats to Windows users. Psydruid predicts this will mean "lots of new GNU/Linux systems maybe even sooner than expected" (Rianne saw a similar article earlier today; it said Microsoft had become very "aggressive"). In some sites today and on Monday it was noted that "Valve have released the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey for November 2024. Here's the details from it. The good news, for Linux users, is that Linux remains above 2% again overall." [1, 2]
So it seems like the number of Free software users grows, even if many use it to play games with DRM. The above "2%" figure represents people who are "gamers" (not necessarily heavy gamers), it's not representative of computer users as a whole. █