more lockup laptop problems with dapper

[Eric S. Johansson]

Wenzhuo Zhang wrote:
> Theoretically, the most suitable sponsor is the graphics card
> manufacturer. They know the hardware specifications inside out, and
> stable drivers can help drive up card sales. I doubt the fund raising
> effort on the end users part to pay developers for writing stable
> drivers could work out.

I am sorry to say, but I think you  may be right.  we have 10 years or 
more experience showing that hardware manufacturers are rewarded for the 
wrong behavior.  unfortunately, we are all so rewarding users for the 
wrong behavior.  We are not teaching them that free software costs money 
to develop.  Normally the money is a subsidy from an employer either 
directly (i.e. salary for working on the project) or indirectly (i.e. 
salary for working on something else) but open-source work is still 
subsidized.

As for fundraising efforts, I was able to successfully raise 80% of what 
I needed for an upgrade to a "kindness of strangers" host for mailing 
lists and websites.[1]

if there was a group focused on developing a specific driver, one could 
do a targeted fund raise with an incremental release.  It wouldn't be 
simple but it is possible.  One would need a trusted intermediary and 
one would expect to pay that intermediary somewhere between seven and 
12% depending on difficulty in collections and payout.  In contrast, 
fundraising with a professional fundraiser runs around 15%.

Maybe I'm more in tune with the financial side than I want to admit.  :-)

--- eric

[1] I help of a variety of public welfare [2] groups that have special 
needs for mailing lists etc. through my super special basement hosting 
facility on the commercial line.  I would have commercial (low) grade 
power if I could find a generator that runs on propane to go into my 
gentrans switch.

[2] light pollution control, open source speech recognition nonprofit, 
Boston-area speech recognition users group, natpython. etc.