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I will try to keep this brief and to the point. This message has been cross posted to several lists which will explain why you might get more than one copy. I hope you find it informative too. Send all flames to me, not to the lists.

I'm taking off the other hats I wear for a moment to ask for you or your company's support of Freenode [1] (technically the Peer-Directed Projects Center or PDPC) now based in the United Kingdom. For those that don't know, Freenode is an IRC [2] network supporting Open Source and Free Software communities globally. Another PDPC activity is the annual FOSSCON conference in the fall. PDPC is specifically [3] raising funds in order to be recognized by the UK as an official charitable organization. This status has many benefits, however they need to raise a certain amount of money by March, 2009. There are just a few days left in the fundraising campaign.

Canonical Ltd. (the company created by Mark Shuttleworth that drives Ubuntu Linux) has graciously stepped forward to provide dollar for dollar matching, magnifying the impact of your donations to PDPC. The fund raising goal has almost been reached but your contribution is needed. Brainstorming by the PDPC board of directors for how to use any funds not used for operations includes hosting live conference events in Europe and the US, extending current services and improving the reliability of the freenode network by hosting a few of their own hubs and backup systems. Freenode is growing rapidly [4] supporting up to 57,000 concurrent users up from a maximum of about 40,000 18 months ago.

Some people may not be aware that IRC is used by a huge array of Open Source and Free Software projects. The list of groups [5] Freenode works with is truly impressive. I feel it is not at all hyperbole to say that the work done over freenode and OFTC [6] are the real-time backbone of open source collaboration throughout the world, Coders use the IRC network to develop applications used by millions of people every day and provide *end user support*. If you use any open source software you may be an indirect beneficiary of the services Freenode provides. I encourage those who are interested to try launching an IRC client such as Pidgin [7] and see for yourself. You won't be sorry you did.

While I have used Freenode for many years, this year I too became a contributor for the first time. For a one time contribution http://freenode.net/pdpc_donations.shtml of as little as $8 you can join me in supporting Freenode and the many Open Source projects they serve.

Thanks for your consideration,

-- -- Grant Bowman grantbow@gmail.com

[1] http://freenode.net/pdpc_donations.shtml http://fosscon.org/about/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat is a form of group instant messaging first used in 1988. Related sites include http://www.irchelp.org/ and http://www.irc.org/

[3] http://blog.freenode.net/2008/10/fundraising-for-charity-status/ http://blog.freenode.net/2009/03/20082009-fundraiser-campaign-update/

[4] http://freenode.net/history.shtml also http://searchirc.com/network/Freenode

[5] http://freenode.net/primary_groups.shtml include the Apache Software Foundation, Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu), Creative Commons Corporation, Free Software Foundation (GNU Project), Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), MySQL AB, NetBSD Foundation, Open Darwin Foundation (Apple builds OSX using Darwin), OpenOffice.org, Red Hat, Inc. & the World Wide Web Consortium among others.

[6] OFTC is a a similar but much smaller IRC network. See "Freenode and OFTC IRC networks buddy up", May 2007 http://www.linux.com/articles/62098 also http://searchirc.com/network/OFTC

[7] http://pidgin.im is an IRC client that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux formerly named Gaim. http://www.mirc.com/ is also popular on the Windows platform.

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