Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

[Posted July 26, 2018 by jake]

Patrick Volkerding, who is the founder and benevolent dictator for life of the Slackware Linux distribution, posted a note at LinuxQuestions.org detailing some financial problems. It appears they mostly stem from a deal that he made with the Slackware Store that has gone badly awry. "Still not sure how to move forward, but I have some hope that the community might think that my work is and has been worth supporting. If at all possible I'd like to get away from replicating physical media which seems to be a lost cause. T-shirts? Well, maybe, but I don't see that providing a reasonable income either. I'm wondering how Patreon would do. It would at least be better than nothing, which is where I am now. Through all of this I have continued to work hard towards getting Slackware 15.0 released because I believe it will be by far the best release we've ever had, and because I'm dedicated to my work and the community that uses it. I've never really been in this for the money. " Note that there is at least one person out there soliciting Bitcoin who is not affiliated with Volkerding, in what looks like a scam of some sort; it is particularly sad because that is similar to what he alleges has happened with Slackware Store as well. No word, yet, on how to go about helping out. [Thanks to Ken Dawson for a heads-up about this.]

[Update: Volkerding has posted his PayPal link for donations.]

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 20:56 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (4 responses)

I think the LF should just declare Slackware Critical Infrastructure and send good wage Pats way. Or just make him a fellow. It is not like they don't have the pocket change to do it. The current situation is really disgraceful for the Linux "community" .. Pat has done more for Linux than most.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 21:14 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

Slackware has some value for certain users but it is definitely a niche distribution and not part of any critical infrastructure for the vendors sponsoring Linux Foundation. Remember that LF is a trade group (501(c)(6)) and not a public charity (501(c)(6)). They don't have to support the community in that sense.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 21:42 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

You mean (3) .. anyways:
You could argue Slackware has done and is still doing a lot of good for the Linux community and maybe the LF members only care for Open Cloud Core Blockchain LTS Version 11, but that is probably build up from packages that got a lot of testing from Slackware over the decades.
I know being a socialist a absolut no-go in the US. The market will do only good for the people and if bad things happen to you you shouldn't have been so lazy, I know.
But still it would be great marketing and PR if some rich players in the Linux field could work something out with Patrick.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 22:01 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I am not against it but your effort is better spend organizing a grass roots campaign with a more diverse funding model from the current users rather than rely on a single association. Even if they agree now, that might not last and you can't depend on it.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 22:14 UTC (Thu) by jmclnx (guest, #72456) [Link]

Yes, I fully agree.

*BUT* we may be rushing to judgement, I think this only was made public a day or two ago and maybe things are happening behind the scenes we have not heard about yet. These days Companies and Foundations are rather slow and like to keep things quiet :)

Yes, I will be donating also, someone who gave so much to the community should not be in this situation.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 21:43 UTC (Thu) by Lysander666 (guest, #125965) [Link] (2 responses)

Patrick has a PayPal for donations - visible in this post on the Linux Questions forum:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/don...

Paypal link from above source - https://www.paypal.me/volkerdi - please consider integrating into your story.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 21:46 UTC (Thu) by lonely_bear (subscriber, #2726) [Link] (1 responses)

Wow, we post similar content almost at the same time.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 21:55 UTC (Thu) by Lysander666 (guest, #125965) [Link]

Haha yes, well, it's information worth duplicating.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 26, 2018 21:44 UTC (Thu) by lonely_bear (subscriber, #2726) [Link] (3 responses)

For donation, please use Patrick's Paypal account for now:
https://www.paypal.me/volkerdi

Ref: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/don...

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 5:00 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

The scam bitcoin address was being posted in multiple HackerNews threads by a decade old account, whose profile has clearly had “Slackware maintainer” hastily edited in and their recent comments are similarly malicious and out of place in nature. Could someone inform the site that it's been compromised?

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 8:44 UTC (Fri) by DG (subscriber, #16978) [Link]

PayPal seem to want to charge a ~10% fee for sending money from the UK. That feels excessive. </moan>

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 9:03 UTC (Fri) by tjasper (subscriber, #4310) [Link]

Like many other long-timers, I have used Slackware in the past.

Done the paypal thing and accepted the paypal UK fee as well. Perhaps the solution Patrick chooses will have lower/zero fees allowing him to receive more.... Lets hope so.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 7:41 UTC (Fri) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (6 responses)

Money? Sure. Second I get home. Without question.

Bigger problem - how do we take the Store's revenue away without hurting Patrick, get his money back for him, stop using the store, move the store to some other more reputable supplier? How long's the deal, how long is he tied in for? Can he terminate and someone help him out with similar services (surely a Cafepress would do most of what they do nowadays, especially if physical media isn't the selling point any more)? He is the benevolent dictator after all!

We owe Patrick a debt of gratitude even if we've never used Slackware, it was *the* first ever distro, and it's still going strong. I used it as my desktop and on servers for more than 20 years when money was tight, when I wanted to learn, when I needed to make things work, and in the commercial environments I worked in. I guarantee that they are still a handful of servers running Slackware that I built, not to mention that I have at least one in my current workplace.

Let's fix Patrick first, especially if he's struggling at home and medically because of the lack of funds. But... come on... let's get him a revenue stream because he shouldn't have to beg to get money that's rightfully his out of the company that he was forced to sell out to.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 9:07 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (2 responses)

it was *the* first ever distro,

I don't think that is true. At least SLS preceded it (and it was the first one I ever installed). Slackware started as fork of SLS, and is probably the oldest Linux distribution still active.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 10:35 UTC (Fri) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

1992-02 MCC Interim
1992-05 SLS
1992-05 TAMU
1992-12 Yggdrasil
...
1993-07 Slackware
1993-09 Debian

Still, single-handedly maintaining a distribution for 25 years is very impressive.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 29, 2018 9:16 UTC (Sun) by tallship (guest, #64208) [Link]

Yes I went from BSD 4.2 on Vaxen and SVR4 to 386BSD (Jolix) on 486 platforms, Then to SLS, followed quickly by Yggdrasil and then my own Spin based on SLS, which I abandoned when I discovered Slackware shortly thereafter.

I'm still a Slacker, a Slackware zealot, in fact; a bit of a debiantard too. Unless I need PAM, I'll deploy Slackware in the enterprise over CentOS anyday, and friends don't let friends run ewboontew either ;)

I don't think we can repost the following link enough to do Patrick the justice he so deservedly should be blessed with: https://paypal.me/volkerdi

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 9:54 UTC (Fri) by ttuttle (subscriber, #51118) [Link] (1 responses)

Honestly, can we get him some pro-bono legal help to get back income from the store people?

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 28, 2018 14:01 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Havn't used Slakware since late 90s, but I'd contribute to that.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Nov 13, 2019 12:28 UTC (Wed) by vpt (guest, #135508) [Link]

My previous employer uses Slackware as a base to personalize the distro that s installed in customer's hardware. The customer being a considerably big retail group.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 12:29 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (5 responses)

Patrick's work is what got me involved with Linux. I put some money in his Paypal account. I hope he can use it to help him right the wrongs that have been done.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 13:03 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (2 responses)

> Patrick's work is what got me involved with Linux.

Yes, me too. I was looking for a real Unix after playing with DJGPP, and Slackware had the advantage of using UMSDOS. For those who don't remember (or are too young to have lived through these days), with UMSDOS you could share the same FAT filesystem between MS-DOS and Linux - no need to dedicate a partition to Linux or to use a fixed-size loopback device. The root of the Linux filesystem was a subdirectory of the MS-DOS filesystem, and the root of the MS-DOS filesystem appeared as a subdirectory on Linux.

Of course, after some time I noticed I was rarely using MS-DOS, so I ended up dedicating a partition to Linux anyway (and later, the whole disk).

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 14:23 UTC (Fri) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link]

Yep, ZIPSLACK and UMSDOS were the perfect middle-ground tool for someone paranoid about wiping out their computer in an era where a reinstall wasn't just a case of downloading everything again.

Was very smart.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 20:37 UTC (Fri) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link]

I remember that time, I think I used UMSDOS for a time as well. However in those days I was re-formatting weekly anyways... Slackware was the first distribution I used when I was a kid (don't even know how I got my hands on it, I didn't have an internet connection back then), I guess that was 20 years ago or more. I wanted to get Linux because it included a C and C++ compiler.

It's hard to estimate how much I have benefited from volunteer work of a lot of people and how little they get in return (often the payoff must feel negative). I literally make my living off of it and I barely give back (maybe $300 a month), looking at many corporations it's even worse.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 23:48 UTC (Fri) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Same. I knew nothing about Linux when I discovered Slackware, and not a great deal about computers. He walked me through installing a newer XFree86 package over email so I could get X running on a Gateway machine with a video card that was not supported by the version shipped with Slackware 96. Slack isn't my default Linux these days, but I'll always be a Slackware guy at heart.

As soon as he's got a Patreon or some other way to fund Slack development, I'm there.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 28, 2018 2:27 UTC (Sat) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

My first Linux machine was a really cheap laptop from Midwest Micro, and to get it to work, I had to tell the kernel not to probe the I/O system on certain addresses. After that, I customized and compiled my own kernel (which took over 12 hours on that thing in those days.) That experience gave me the confidence and nerve to tackle some "sysgen" procedures on the IBM mainframe at work. That was very valuable to me.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Jul 27, 2018 18:45 UTC (Fri) by jberkus (guest, #55561) [Link]

Given how long Slackware has been a thing, maybe the problem is that it *still* runs out of Patrick's personal bank account? Why doesn't he affiliate with SPI, SFC or another foundation so that he can have a stable organization for fundraising? A lot of his financial issues over the years (this is not the first time) have stemmed from a lack of corporate structure, and hence a lack of verifiability or legal advice. Getting nonprofit affiliation should be the first step in fixing this situation.

Financial woes for Slackware's Patrick Volkerding

Posted Aug 9, 2018 12:58 UTC (Thu) by phil42 (guest, #5175) [Link]

I remember installing slackware then being greeted by some text about shooting myself in the foot for free. I also remember installing the "sample users" package which installed users snake, gonzo and satan with known passwords then sent email to a list that informed the world that those users were installed at my ip address.

I hope Pat recovers in all ways including financially. The guy has a sense of humor.