The Slackware Store (https://store.slackware.com/) has apparently been misappropriating funds from Patrick Volkerding.
Donation Links:
https://www.patreon.com/slackwarelinux
or
https://www.paypal.me/volkerdi (post from Patrick Volkerding himself - https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donating-to-slackware-4175634729/page11.html#post5883695).
Do not use the Bitcoin address in the post above.
News Links:
https://www.itwire.com/open-source/83757-slackware-creator-in-strife,-claims-store-has-not-paid-him.html
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donating-to-slackware-4175634729/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17605284
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17598685
https://lwn.net/Articles/761004/
http://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/slackware/slackware-current/ChangeLog.txt
Fri Jul 27 21:01:22 UTC 2018
Hey folks, my first order of business here needs to be a huge thank you to everyone who has donated at https://paypal.me/volkerdi to help keep this project going. As most of you are already aware by now, the financial situation here at Slackware HQ has not been great for many years, including not getting any pay for the last two years and forcing me (and my family) to live very frugally while I continued to work on the project hoping I'd figure out a way to actually monetize it by the time that Slackware 15.0 is ready for release. I'm not trying to cast any blame regarding the situation. Really, I can only blame myself for not trying to build my own ship years ago when things began to not really work out. I'm still looking into sustainable funding options such as Patreon or Liberapay (or perhaps both), and I'm open to other ideas. I'm no longer in immediate danger of going broke, and I'm no longer entertaining the notion of joining my friends at the local potato chip factory in order to pay my bills. :) My family is grateful and humbled by the support we've received. Hope we'll be able to keep this project going for a long time. Also, I realize that the website lacks updates and needs attention and I will need to find some time to devote to that. I've never been much of a website designer, and the slackware.com site is basically left over from work done by former Walnut Creek / BSDi employees. I've never seen able to make much sense of the SQL backend. The interface to edit and post articles is clunky (and I'm not sure the PHP for that even works any more). When I've posted articles in recent years, I've done so by editing the main page already processed from PHP into HTML, which is pretty darn messy as I'm sure you can imagine. I tend to prioritize the distribution itself over other demands on my time - that's clearly a lot to do with how things ended up the way they did. So, I guess that's the report for now. Lots more work to do and not enough time to do it in… that part I don't see changing moving forward. :)
Thanks very much again. I'll do my best to keep you all posted.
- Pat
Added the article from LWN about this. As I get the links I'll keep updating.
Added Patrick Volkerding's message in the Current Changelog. I corrected some typing errors while I reformatted the text.
Added Slackware's Patreon link.
Post last edited at