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What a Deal: Ad-Free, No CAPTCHA and You Help Keep Us Funded

Things were going good for our Indiegogo fundraising campaign, then they stalled.

In case you don’t know, we’re in the midst of our 2016 Indiegogo fundraising campaign, seeking to raise a total of $3,700 to keep us funded. Actually, this is the amount by which we missed our last fundraising campaign last May, in which you generously contributed $2,300 to FOSS Force to enable us to offer a small amount of pay to our writers. The money contributed to our current campaign will be spent the same way. If we’re successful, this will fund us until at least the end of the year and perhaps forever, if revenue from other sources such as advertising continues to rise. The campaign went up in early January and currently has 23 days left.

Seven days ago, when we hit the halfway point of the campaign, things were looking good. With 30 days left in the campaign, we were only three percentage points from having raised half of our campaign goal. Our self-set daily goal, the amount we need to collect on a daily basis to meet our goal, was stable at around $55. Then things came to a screeching halt. Since February 7, the campaign has seen only two contributions for a total of $35, which has pushed our daily goal up to $85.

We need to turn this around. Our funding goal is not arbitrary, not if we are to continue to offer you at least the same level of coverage as you have come to expect from us. If we don’t make our goal it will mean we’ll have to cut back on our content — the only place we can cut — offering you less just when we need to be offering you more. This, of course, will lead to lower traffic to our site, which will lead to lower ad revenue…I think you see where this is going.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

Building a FOSS Force Community

In the last couple of years we’ve begun to notice that in addition to the folks who visit FOSS Force on a regular basis to read our articles, we’re starting to see a community develop. We mainly see this in the comments sections at the bottom of each article, where many of you have become regulars by posting often, agreeing or disagreeing with our articles, and offering ideas from your own experience.

To us, it feels as if those of you who contribute your thoughts and ideas by regularly commenting have become a part of our site, a community of people who publicly represent what FOSS Force is about, just as much as Larry, Hunter, Ken, Isaac and the rest of us who write and produce the site. In other words, you’ve become a part of who we are, and although we have never met you, we feel as if you are friends of ours.

Let’s build on that, shall we? Let’s celebrate you, the community of readers who congregate and express yourselves through comments on our site, and make you an even more important part of FOSS Force than you already are. In other words, let’s do a little old fashioned community building.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

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