Our Wild and Crazy FOSS Force Bake Sale

As you probably know by now, FOSS Force needs your help and we’re holding a fundraising campaign. You most likely figure we’re going to be doing a lot of begging, explaining exactly why you should support what we do here, and trying to guilt you into making a contribution. Yup, that’s how fundraising is done, so we’ll be doing a bit of all that. Most of all, however, we’re going to do our best to make this fun.

Ya see, “we’re wild and crazy guys” and gals — if we may steal some intellectual property from Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin and SNL. And not unlike the Czech brothers in the old skits, we’re refugees — in our case from the proprietary software world where we were caught throwing some rocks at Windows and OS X. But now that we’ve found software freedom, it’s time to party online with our Firefoxes, and raise the money we need in the process.

Our wild and crazy idea is this: Let’s turn our fundraising effort into a FOSS Force bake sale. Let’s offer some perks you’re sure to be able to use, or other perks that will make it easy for you to get actively involved with FOSS Force. Let’s offer you the opportunity to trade your donation for some stuff we metaphorically baked ourselves, and other stuff we found lying around in the garage and thought you might find useful.

So let me take you by the hand and lead you to the first booth, offering for your inspection the first item we’ve baked for you. Remember, if you see something that whets your appetite, all you have to do is go to our Indiegogo campaign page, click a few clicks, and it’s yours.

1. Adblock Plus Subscriber — $10: Being proponents of free tech, we certainly support your right to use ad blocking software such as Adblock Plus. After all, it’s your computer and we’re adamant in our belief that you need to be in complete control of it. However, whenever you block ads on FOSS Force, you’re depriving us of much needed revenue. Well, here’s how you can block ads on our site while still doing your part to keep us online. Your $10 contribution will more than make up for any ad revenue we lose, so you can sleep well at night knowing that you’ve done the right thing by paying your way! It’s a cheap win-win solution.

2. Live Linux USB Thumb Drive — $22: Here ya go, for about the same price you might pay for an empty USB thumb drive, we’ll install the live version of the Linux distro of your choice. All you need do is contact us by email after you make your contribution and let us know what distro you want. If we haven’t heard from you within two days, we’ll default to Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop. If there’s no live version of your selected distro available, we’ll send a bootable install drive instead. Such a deal!

3. “Bronze” Subscription — $25: I personally think this one’s pretty cool. Bronze subscribers get to become “Day Sponsors,” just like on NPR. Within a day after you make your contribution, we’ll send you an email. You reply with a date and up to 250 characters of text you’d like included with your Day Sponsorship. On the date you name, your text will be prominently displayed on our front page, preceded by your name. Your text might read something like: “Celebrating the birthday of my spouse, who puts up with my constant puttering on the computer instead of spending quality time with her.” You know, something romantic to make up for the times you’re not.

4. Belkin Surge Protectors — $45: Okay, they’re just surge protectors. They’re used, maybe a little scratched and some might be missing the child safety plugs. But they’re Belkins, which is like the Cadillac of surge protectors, and they’re all the super cool type with six outlets each. Oh, and there’s three of them in a set. They’ve all been bench tested to make sure they’re in good, safe working order. We all need them and we hate spending money for them at Wally Mart, so it’s a not-so-glamours way to give FOSS Force $45 and get something useful in return. We’ve got three sets of these. Free shipping.

5. “Silver” Subscribtion — $50: Ready for your fifteen minutes of fame? You’ll get it with a Silver Subscription to FOSS Force. You’ll be featured in a “FOSS User’s Interview.” The day after you make your contribution, we’ll send you an email with ten questions. You answer the questions thoughtfully, hit send, and we’ll publish the interview on FOSS Force. We’ll be interested to know what distro you use, on what equipment, why you use FOSS, and stuff like that. What a great way for our readers to find out about other FOSS users, and for you to get some FOSS cred.

6. 22″ LG Flatron Monitor — $65: There’s not a lot we can say about these except that they’re really nice LG monitors. We’ve got three of them, all in excellent working condition. If you’ve been looking for a spare monitor, or if the monitor you’re using is on its last legs, here’s a good deal. In other words, you get the monitor you need at a fair price and FOSS Force gets $65 closer to making our goal. Again it’s a win-win, and again, with free shipping. We only have three of these, so hurry.

7. 20″ LG Flatron Monitor — $65: Used but in excellent condition. Pretty much the same as the monitors above, but with a slightly smaller screen. We have two of these, so again if you need a monitor, don’t dawdle. Remember, your $65 contribution gets the monitor delivered to your door. We pay shipping. All you have to do is wait for delivery.

8. E09EI6, Intel classmate PC — $85: These are just the thing if you have school children who might be inclined to be more than a little less than careful with a laptop, which is kind of a definition for all school children is it not. I’m not saying they’re bullet proof, but they’re designed to handle just about any “oops” moment your child might have with them. These have a light-weight design, less than 1.45kg, with leather handle for easy carrying. Rugged design and kid friendly for a child’s everyday use. Conceived with a rationalized ergonomic design with integrated software and hardware solution. It delivers wireless communications with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g. plus a 0.3 mega pixels camera, Used. Excellent condition. Comes with new wireless mouse. We only have three of these. And once again, I’ll repeat the mantra: Free shipping.

9. “Gold” Subscription — $100: Ready to go for the gold? Gold subscribers get both the Bronze and Silver perks, Day Sponsorship and inclusion in our “FOSS Force Reader’s Interview.” But wait, there’s more! Donate at the Gold level and we’ll review the x86 Linux distro of your choice, complete with screenshots. After you make your contribution, we’ll send you an email asking you what distro you’d like reviewed. After that, we’ll “Make it so.” In a hurry to see your distro reviewed? It’s first come, first served. Sign up early.

So there you go. You’ve seen everything we’ve got to offer in our “wild and crazy guys” and gals bake sale. Remember, if there’s nothing here you really want, you can still make a donation just because you want to support our coverage of the FOSS ecosystem. All you have to do to either make a donation or pick up one of the perks I’ve shown you is go to our Indiegogo campaign page and the rest will be self evident.

And as Bartles & Jaymes used to say: We thank you for your support.