Free Software Foundation Receives 'Historic' Donations Worth Nearly $900K - in Monero

On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the Free Software Foundation announced it had received two major contributions totaling around $900,000 USD — in the cryptocurrency Monero.

The two donations "are among some of the largest private gifts ever made to the organization," the FSF said in a statement.

"The donors wish to remain anonymous," according to the FSF's statement: The organization is in its annual winter fundraising drive, currently at three-quarters of its $400,000 USD winter goal, and will now switch its focus to a member drive thanks in part to these donations... The donation will support the organization's technical team and infrastructure capacity, as well as strengthen its campaigns, education, licensing, and advocacy initiatives, and future opportunities. The FSF is seeking donations until year-end after which they aim to gain 100 associate members through its year-end fundraising ending January 16.
The FSF's executive director said the donations prove "that software freedom is recognized more and more as a principal issue today, at the core of several other social movements people care about like privacy, ownership, and the right to repair...

"We are proudly supported by a large variety of contributors who care about digital rights. All donations matter, whether $5 or $500,000."

Re:

[unixisc]

He'd need to be bathed in EZoff in order to be at normal cleanliness levels

Btw, what is Monero? An AGPL 3.0 licensed crypto?

Monero is usually associated with moeny laundering

[_merlin]

The trouble with Monero is it's one of the cryptocurrencies that's supposed to be difficult to trace. That means it's one of the more common ones for crypto-mining malware, money laundering, small-time ransomware, etc. I'm not saying these donations necessarily come from criminals, but all the same I wouldn't want to be associated with large Monero transactions just because of how shady the whole thing is. Bitcoin, Dogecoin, etc. all use an open ledger so it's a lot easier to see where the tokens came fr

Re:

[dskoll]

Maybe so, but how do you launder money by donating it to charity? Or are you saying this is shady money that some criminal, for some reason, has decided to donate?

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

You launder through Monero since it’s privacy based and not traceable.

Re:

[Skjellifetti2]

Maybe it was someone else's money.

Re:

[_merlin]

I wasn't suggesting they're laundering the money by donating it to the FSF. It's just that Monero always seems to be linked to shady business, so I'd be worried any substantial sum of Monero is dirty money, or that by dealing in Monero I'd look shady by association. (As for why a criminal would donate to the FSF, maybe it's like when a mafia boss donates to charity to try and soothe their consciences.)

Re:

[rsilvergun]

It can also be very difficult to turn cryptocurrency into actual cash. Liquidity outside of money laundering where you don't care if you lose half the value of your investment because you're doing illegal things with a high profit margin to begin with has always been a problem for crypto.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

I was thinking the same thing, this money is the result of black market sales. Still, there's worse things the type of folks with $900k in Monero could spend that money on and it's plausible deniability

"However, in the future I would prefer a nondescript briefcase to the sack with a dollar sign on it."

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[ArchieBunker]

My guess is a sovereign citizen type of person donated. Although typically they don’t support left wing causes.

Is this really a concern?

[Okian Warrior]

[Monero is] one of the more common ones for crypto-mining malware, money laundering, small-time ransomware, etc.

Is this really a concern?

If your organization is doing (ethically) good work, does it really matter where the money comes from?

Accepting money from the mafia, or from a repressive government, doesn't in any way promote those ideals. And if you *didn't* accept the money it would be used by the original owners which are (per the assumptions) of lower ethical standards, so wouldn't it be better to have the money used by someone who is doing good?

I'm reminded of Mother Teresa [catholicismcoffee.org], who famously accepted donations from anywhere to further her goals, including people with questionable human rights records. Should she have stopped trying to ease the suffering because of where the money came from*?

I don't see it.

If someone can explain why it would be morally wrong to accept the money, I'd like to hear it.

(*) Some controversy over Mother Teresa's actions, but so far as I can tell it's mostly information. But in this case I'm using her perceived legacy as a paradigm without commenting on whether it's correct or not.

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[Gavagai80]

Knowingly receiving stolen money is a serious crime in every country in the world, and there's no "unless you spend it on good things" exception. It contributes to encouraging crime, because the criminal clearly wanted to make that donation. It absolutely really matters where money comes from. Now, of course the FSF doesn't know this is stolen money -- but if there's reason to suspect it, that is obviously a serious concern to ponder for any legitimate organization.

If your organization cares about doing eth

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[s0nicfreak]

"Knowingly" being the key word. We can't assume all Monero is used for laundering money just because people frequently do that. Unless we're also going to assume all credit card transactions are done with stolen credit cards because people frequently do that.

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[s0nicfreak]

(Replace assume with suspect as I missed that part of your comment at first)

Re:

[Deal In One]

Maybe someone doesnt want to piss off the current political powers?

That could be a reason for use of that crypto.

IDEA: 1% shares in startups for Open Source

[greytree]

Rather than ask companies to give (relative) pennies to Open Source when they have IPO'ed and are rich, could we not make it a standard that every startup that uses Open Source software donates 1% of their company to Open Source as soon as they are founded ?

Re:

[dskoll]

Yes, but who is "Open Source"? It's a pretty diffuse group of individuals and organizations who create open-source software.

Or do you imagine a collective that distributes funds similar to music copyright collectives?

Re:

[greytree]

I think I thought the donors would choose based on what %age of the startup's software each Open Source group was responsible for.

But maybe - if the FSF doesn't do it already - it would be a good idea to create a body whose job it was to organize exactly that ?

Re: IDEA: 1% shares in startups for Open Source

[robot5x]

Linux users are still arguing about which one of 80000 window managers to use, good luck with that

Re:

[greytree]

I guess it would work by the body simply asking the startup's CTO for the percentages when they agreed to donate the 1%, and registering those numbers.

It wouldn't be as deeply personal as window manager choice or Vi vs Emacs.

Great news ...

[kiore]

This funding should enable them to finish HURD.