Flattr FOSS – Page 2

Free and Open Source Software Projects to Flattr

April 1, 2011 by Raphaël Hertzog

Flattr recently launched FlattrChattr, a blog featuring news about what’s happening in the Flattr ecosystem. I hear that they might do an article about Flattr FOSS… and it’s not an April fool’s joke 🙂

Anyway, here are 5 suggestions of free software related “things” that you can support with Flattr.

Libre Office via The Document Foundation (Flattr link). This is the fork of the famous OpenOffice.org that all major distributions (including Debian) are using. The foundation runs a fundraising challenge to cover the expected costs in terms of marketing, hardware, infrastructure and so on.
Greenshot (Flattr link) is a nice Windows application to take screenshots.
Debian Packages that Need Lovin’ (Flattr link) is a web interface where you can easily browse the list of Debian packages that are in need of some help, or a new maintainer. It’s much more usable than the corresponding entry in the bug tracker (see wnpp) or even than the corresponding page on the official website (see here).
Patchage (Flattr link) is a modular patch bay for Jack audio and Alsa Midi. Patchage provides a graphical interface to connect jack and midi inputs and outputs. Each application is represented as one box with inputs on the left and output on the right. Boxes can be moved around and arranged to have a clear display of the current setup. (Description copied from the corresponding Debian package because I’m not familiar at all with any of this stuff)
Seif Lotfy (Flattr link) is one of the leading developers behind the Zeitgeist framework used by modern desktops to provide more “contextual awareness”. The framework logs your activity, establishes relationships between your documents based on many criteria, and makes all the information available to applications. They can use it to make it easier to find your documents, to provide improved contextual suggestions, etc.

This article is part of the Flattr FOSS project.

5 Free Software To Support With Flattr

March 1, 2011 by Raphaël Hertzog

Another month and thus another issue of Flattr FOSS. Time flies but Flattr’s usage seems to remain relatively strong.

I was fearing that people get bored after some time but that does not seem be to the case, my Flattr income does not really drop (it doesn’t take off either ;-)). I get a bit less for dpkg than at the start but a bit more for my blog.

Enough babbling, let’s go straight to the 5 projects to flattr this month:

Linux Mint (Flattr link) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and Ubuntu that targets home desktop users. I have never tried it (I’m too much of an hardcore Debianer) but I’ve read several good reviews saying that it works well out of the box with good multimedia support. If you try it out, be sure to pick Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). 🙂
Network Block Device (NBD) user-space support tools (Flattr link) is the set of tools to setup a block device whose content is really on a remote server. It requires support of NBD in the kernel of course. The user space tools are maintained by Debian developer Wouter Verhelst.
Tahoe LAFS (Flattr link) is a filesystem that implements a cloud storage. The data are distributed across multiple servers in such a way that it can continue to work even if one of the servers fails.
Gajim (Flattr link) is a full featured and easy to use Jabber client. If you don’t need support of multiple instant messaging protocols, this Jabber client might be a good fit for you.
Aurélien Gateau (Flattr link) is a KDE developer who takes one day per week off his work to work on KDE. He seeks support from the community to compensate for the loss of revenue. Much like me, he has a support page with a complete history of the amount of donations received. I can only sympathize with people who try to live true to their passion… good luck Aurélien!

This article is part of the Flattr FOSS project.

5 Free Software projects to support with Flattr

February 1, 2011 by Raphaël Hertzog

GNU Wget (Flattr link) is the famous command line utility used to download files over HTTP. Nice to see some GNU projects on Flattr!
Pingus (Flattr link) is a nice Lemmings clone. It’s a game where you have to guide a group of penguins through dangerous levels to reach an exit.
Download Statusbar (Flattr link) is a Firefox extension that replaces the download window by a small status bar embedded in the main browser window.
PCSC-Lite (Flattr link) is a middleware to access a smart card using SCard API (PC/SC).
Mathomatic (Flattr link) is general-purpose Computer Algebra System.

This article is part of the Flattr FOSS project.

16 Debian contributors that you can thank

January 3, 2011 by Raphaël Hertzog

I put 5 EUR in Flattr each month and I like to spend those among other Debian contributors. That’s why I keep a list of Debian people that I have seen on Flattr (for most of them I noticed through an article on Planet Debian).

Directory of Debian contributors that you can thank

I thought this list could be useful for others so I put it on a web page. Then I realized that limiting this to Flattr was not a good idea, and indeed several developers already propose multiple ways to be thanked.

I went back through my list and looked up each developer’s website to identify a “Thank me” page (it can be “Donate”, “Support me”, “Amazon Wishlist”, etc.). Obviously this means that Debian contributors who are not on Flattr do not appear on the initial list even if they have some “Thank me” page… please help me fix this and send me the missing entries if you know of any.

Click here to view the directory. The initial listing contains 16 developers and 8 of them have an additional (non-Flattr) “Thank me” link.

Please note the warning I put on the page: the inclusion in the directory should not be taken as an endorsement of the amount or quality of the work done for Debian. You are supposed to make up your own judgment when deciding who you want to thank (but the links can help you learn more about what each contributor is doing).

Flattr subscriptions explained

Since this article replaces the traditional Flattr FOSS issue for this month, I wanted to introduce a new Flattr feature I recently discovered.

With Flattr you have to click on some things every month or your monthly fee is given to a random charity. Now you can avoid this pitfall by “subscribing” to some things that you like. A subscription acts like an automatic click during a period of 3/6/12 months.

If you want to subscribe to something, you just have to click a second time on the Flattr button and you will see this:
Screenshot with Flattr subscription choices

Once you clicked on the desired duration, the subscription is recorded and the button will appear like this:
Screenshot with a subscribed flattr button

Easy, isn’t it?

PS: I installed a WordPress plugin to make it super easy to share my articles on the most common social networks.

Directory of Debian contributors that you can thank

Flattr subscriptions explained

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