Chapter 12. Contributing to the Debian Project

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12.3 How can I contribute financially to the Debian project?

One can make individual donations to one of two organizations that are critical to the devel 

opment of the Debian project.

12.3.1 Software in the Public Interest

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is an IRS 501(c)(3) non profit organization, formed when

FSF withdrew their sponsorship of Debian. The purpose of the organization is to develop and

distribute free software.

Our goals are very much like those of FSF, and we encourage programmers to use the GNU

General Public License on their programs. However, we have a slightly different focus in that

we are building and distributing a Linux system that diverges in many technical details from

the GNU system planned by FSF. We still communicate with FSF, and we cooperate in sending

them changes to GNU software and in asking our users to donate to FSF and the GNU project.

SPI can be reached at:

http://www.spi inc.org/

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12.3.2 Free Software Foundation

At this time there is no formal connection between Debian and the Free Software Foundation.

However, the Free Software Foundation is responsible for some of the most important software

components in Debian, including the GNU C compiler, GNU Emacs, and much of the C run 

time library that is used by all programs on the system. FSF pioneered much of what free

software is today: they wrote the General Public License that is used on much of the Debian

software, and they invented the  GNU  project to create an entirely free Unix system. Debian

should be considered a descendent of the GNU system.

FSF can be reached at:

http://www.fsf.org/

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