[aur-general] Donations and upgrades

[w9ya]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:40 PM, w9ya <w9ya at qrparci.net> wrote:
> > If you guys put
> > the same vigor and effort into promoting a fundraising effort, you would
> > have the resources to host all manner of binary packages MUCH AS OTHER
> > DISTROS DO WITHOUT A NEED TO CULL OUT THINGS AS A FIRST STEP.
>
> And it's really that easy, is it? Do you know I have to pay taxes on
> our donation money? We're not a non-profit organization. You can't
> just donate to a person and make it a tax writeoff. There's many many
> things in there that I think you're missing.
>
> More to the point, it takes EFFORT from people. The last upgrade took
> a lot of Dale's, Dan's, and my time.
>
> It's easy to sit on the outside and say "It's easy! Just do this!".
> There are many many hurdles. Throwing money at a problem isn't the way
> to fix it.


If it is a larger hard drive, yes throwing money at it DOES work. IF a
server needs upgrading, yes money works there too. And if you need to buy a
bigger pipe, money also works there too. And that is what we were told
originally was the problem, and for the next several weeks we were told that
was the nature of the problem. Even now you are worried about just such a
problem, as you stated today. OR ... are the hardware resources NOT a
problem ? Exactly which is it ? (I know you like to be brief, but sometimes
you are TOO BRIEF in as much as you are not giving enough information to be
understood well.)

So .... yes, throwing enough money at a problem can decidedly help reducing
it. Time and money are related in our world, as such when you speak about
the time involved, money can alleviate those concerns too if you are willing
to use it.

And I don't much care if it is a tax-write-off either. If I did I would have
made a point of asking about that already. Most people that donate to
charity welcome a tax-write-off, but I know of scant few that base their
willingness to donate based on that. My father use to raise amazing amounts
of money building a now famous medical school. Oftentimes he would raise
towards 100 million in one year and this in the 1960's and 70's. I sat in on
some of this as it took place. Tax write offs were never a deciding issue on
whether someone donated. That I did not hear. (And if you look at
fundraising a bit you will find this to be true even from people whose
station in life was what we would consider poor but not so poor as to not
devote some of what they earn to charity.)

IF you are not set up to accept money without paying taxes, then YES you
SHOULD fix that immediately. And I mean next week. I can think of NO GOOD
reason for you to be paying taxes on funds donated for such an endeavor.
NONE. Tell me where you live, and I will help you find a good lawyer that
does this. It should not cost much at all.

I wish you would have taken a moment and spoke up about how you collect
donations in previous weeks when I brought it up. We could be further along
at this point I think.

Regards;

Bob F.
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