PDPC Fundraiser 2011

Hello everyone and Happy St Valentine's Day!

We here at freenode and PDPC love Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and we know that at least 70,000 of you do too.

What better time than the middle of February to show your love and appreciation?

Peer-Directed Projects Center Ltd. (PDPC) exists to support all sorts of peer-directed projects, and our roots are firmly planted in the world of FOSS. Hundreds of projects, large and small, use our services, including:

• freenode: probably the reason you're on this blog - the 70,000-strong IRC network focused on FOSS

• Geeknics: the popular real-world meetups for geeks - "Geek Picnics" (we don't bite, honest!)

• FOSSCon: the friendly and successful conference about to enter its second year - watch this space

• fossevents: your online guide to the real-world happenings of the FOSS universe

• ... and infinitely more! Got an idea? Get involved and let us know about it.

The aim of this fundraiser is to generate £5000, which will help to cover general operating expenses and enable us to apply for recognition as a Charity. This will help us to show our appreciation to donors and sponsors (on freenode) who may be able to claim tax benefits from their governments as a result. It also means that we can ensure that more of future donations go towards PDPC's projects, and not to the taxman!

While the aim of the fundraiser is, of course, to generate income for PDPC, we want to give you the opportunity to express your appreciation for the projects and developers you love. For the next two weeks only, we are running the following offers:

Valentine cloaks

Would you love to send your favourite developer a valentine? Donate £10 or more and we'll offer the target of your affections a "pdpc/valentine/message/account" cloak for the duration of the valentine period. The best bit? You get to choose "message"! Of course, you will still, subject to the same staff discretion as usual, be welcome to a PDPC supporter cloak for yourself. Donate here.

Please keep the message clean and pleasant, and be aware that we will not set cloaks that we deem to be offensive or that the recipient does not want. If you wish for us to tell the recipient that you bought their cloak, let us know. All of this, with your account name too, should be conveyed in the PayPal donation message. We will process outstanding requests at least daily, and these valentine cloaks will remain for 24 hours from when they were set.

Cloud Nine

As usual, when you donate to PDPC, we will give you the opportunity to link your donation to a channel - this might be a channel you frequent, or that for a project you love. For the next few weeks (and possibly beyond, but without the love theme!), we are going to use this data to compile a Love Cloud (yes, you guessed it - "Cloud Nine") where at a glance you will be able to see the relative contributions in each project's name. We are measuring donations in hugs: £5 = 1 hug (£10 = 2, £500 = 100), and the hearts will be scaled appropriately (if we have to break out some logarithmic scaling, we have success!). Cloud Nine will be sitting over the homepage of freenode.net.

We're all about sharing the love here at freenode, so if you are naming a channel with your donation we would love it if you would tell us why. What makes this project so great? Please try to keep kudos concise! We might wallop some of the best messages (so set yourself /umode +w to see them, or /umode -w to hide them), and we will blog the collected kudos at the end of the valentine period. If you do not want your account name to be attached to feedback that you send, please mention this to us. All of this should be placed into the PayPal donation comment. Donate here.

We have some more ideas for the fundraiser in the pipeline, so keep an eye on this blog for more details!

Finally, but by no means least, significant thanks are owed to JonathanD, mgdm and Scott Rigby of BaseKamp who have contributed much time and effort to forming this fundraiser launch at short notice. You're awesome.

So, everyone, I'd encourage you to put your hands in your pockets, send a small donation our way (£5 - the cost of a couple of pints of beer?) and, most importantly, get involved with our fundraising fun for 2011!

With love,

Martinp23, the Board and Staff.

Peer-Directed Projects Center Ltd. is a company limited by guarantee (no 06680918), 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY, England