A few thoughts from the treasurer as Roktober draws to a close. I hope I haven’t posted this too late to have a positive impact on our overall fund drive. We are way off our goal for this year and I am not sure if that is the result of the uncertainty in the economy or people are just sick of us 
We have seen a huge fall-off in donations from the US, and I wonder whether it is because we expressed the goal in Euros and somehow offended our friends outside of Europe. Last year, because of the strength of the Euro against the other world currencies, we made a decision to express our goal in Euros because many of our expenses are in Euros. This is not because we are a Euro centric project. In fact, we have just as many US based devs as Europe, and we also have people in Australia, China and South America. We need support from around the world, not just Europe, so if we somehow put you off, or you think your currency isn’t as valuable, please reconsider.
Speaking of which, we are planning on giving two prizes this year so I think it is fair to give an entry for local currency, because even though a Euro buys more Canadian or US Dollars, 10 Dollars buys the same amount of bread in North American as 10 Euros does in Europe. So if you live outside of Europe and 10 Euros is a lot more than 10 Dollars, fear not, you will get an entry in our giveaway based on local currencies.
Towards the end of last year we spent €2000 to send 12 people to aKademy, all of whom but one was approved by KDE e.V. for reimbursement. So the real cost of those people attending was closer to €10,000. Thankfully, KDE is a great, well-run organization and can make attendance possible at all. We are all really happy that we can fund the remaining 20% as for some of our student contributors, that could have meant the difference between attending and not attending.
We spent about €1500 on technical and administrative items like server hosting, domain administration, develop resources (books) and hardware.
In addition to aKademy, we spent over €3500 attending free software conferences around the world including CeBIT, Fosdem and LinuxTag in Berlin. We had devs giving presentations in Taiwan (which led to Amarok being included on the eeePC) and Austin, Texas in the US. In addition to giving presentations, we attended many educational seminars and spent time on promotional activities for free software and KDE in general and Amarok in particular. The money was spent on travel, lodging, registration fees, booth rentals, and promotional items.
In a moment of undisciplined emotional weakness, we bought each developer/contributor team member two t-shirts. A small thank you for the large amounts of time put into the project by volunteers who are doing this for fun, not profit.
I know that Paypal is an issue for many people, so if you would like to contribute but will not use Paypal, please send an email to greg@getamarok.com for instructions on how to send a check or make a bank transfer. Anybody that has already contacted me about this does not need to send another message.
Thanks again for all of your support.
Hi Greg,
maybe it’s because Bart told everybody, that “there’s no such month as Rocktober” in last weeks episode
(see http://www.snpp.com/guides/chalkboard.openings.html entry KABF14, for those who didn’t see it)
michael
Just donated
Amarok 2 is coming together nicely. Realizing that and the general impressive improvement in KDE4.1.71 let me to donate again, like last year. Please keep up the great work. Thanks!
Although you say that you are not a Euro centric project, really I think that KDE is a euro centric project. I have been following the planet for a while, and most of the events and news, and location oriented stuff seems to happen in Europe. Also out of all the linux users I know I am really the only KDE one I know (I live in Cleveland btw). So yeah I think there is room for some out reach here.
Well, regardless of what KDE may or may not be, we are trying to be world centric. I know tons of Amarok users that run in GNOME or xfce, or something else. We’re trying to be the best digital music player on Linux, not the the best on KDE.
KDE though does seem to have lost some steam in the States, so I’d agree with you on that point. Also, I think KDE is realizing the need to have some stuff stateside. I think they just announced an event for somewhere out west next year, although I can’t recall exactly what off the top of my head.
Sorry to hear that you are not receiving as much money as expected. I just sent 20 GBP your way, hope it helps.
Oh, and Amarok 2 is going to be amazing! (I couldn’t get the beta to work, but have been using it from svn a while back, and have been following the planet).
First off, I doubt it has anything to do with Euros vs US dollars. I hadn’t donated because I had forgotten to (I have most years). But also, the economic meltdown is basically on all of the galdarned time in the US. You really can’t get away from it. So it severely tightens the average American’s wallet. Especially since people like college students can’t even secure student loans. Let’s hope that getting the message in front of people will get some more donations going. Otherwise, I hope my 40 euros helped.
Times are tough, the economy is scary. But even in the bad times it’s important to support the things you care about. I’ve donated twice, once in euros, once in dollars. It’s disappointing to see that we’re less than halfway to the goal.
lol cool picturess