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Donating To The Armour ArchiveI've never been great with setting up for, or dealing with, donations. I haven't been running the Archive for all this time in an attempt to make a profit, nor even to break even. In fact, until I was pressured into it, I didn't even have a page created that indicated you could support the Armour Archive, and when I just checked on it now, I found that it's been a decade since I said that I would "soon" see about setting up a mechanism to accept donations. For a while, though, I've been thinking about what would happen to the Archive if I were run over by a truck (at a previous job, they called a project "truck sensitive" if it couldn't handle the lead programmer being run over this way). And... the Archive is probably "truck sensitive." Which might be a bad thing.Why should I donate to the Archive?You shouldn't. But since you got to this page by explicitly clicking on a "donate" link, I'll assume that you really want to. I suppose you should donate to support the Archive if you feel it's useful to you, and you'd like to encourage me (JT) and/or others to keep it around. Why shouldn't I donate to the Archive?Ah... now there's an easier question! You shouldn't donate because you feel some sort of pressure or obligation. You shouldn't donate in an attempt to get me to like you better. You shouldn't donate in an attempt to have some sort of control over what the Archive is, or what content it has. You shouldn't donate in order to get preferential treatment as a vendor. How much should I donate?Nothing. No... really... how much should I donate?A million dollars (US). Sheesh! Can't you answer a simple question?Well, not really. What you should donate is up to you. I would ask that you *not* donate if it's less than $5, because Paypal takes a (fairly small) fixed amount out of each donation, along with a percentage. I don't begrudge Paypal its profit, but there's a point at which your payment is more a contribution to Paypal than a donation to the Archive. That seems silly. If you want to support Paypal, just give them money! Okay, then how much does it cost to run the Archive?The Archive runs up about a thousand dollars in hosting, name-registration, and ISP costs each year. All the software we use is free-ware (GPL or similar). The hardware costs are probably about $500 a year, though it's a bit hard to say since we don't get new hardware every year, and we have more powerful hardware than is really necessary. The time that I and other moderators put in is donated. Until there's a lot of money generated by the Archive, it'll remain that way. I would absolutely love to be able to pay contributors for essays, patterns, articles, and other useful things, but that's not even on the radar at this point. So... if you're still interested...There should be a button immediately below this that'll take you to Paypal's secure server, and let you make a donation to the Armour Archive (via "jt@armourarchive.org"). If you'd like to send something in via the US mail, you can send donations to: The Armour Archive |
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