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Contributing to the Internet Software Consortium DHCP Dis-
tribution
EXHORTATION
The Internet Software Consortium DHCP Distribution has
historically been funded through the donation of various
charitable and non-charitable organizations, as well as by
individual contributions. To some degree, support for the
distribution has been done on a volunteer basis, but by
and large the reason that you have this distribution in
your hands right now is because people like you have pro-
vided funding for it.
We would like to encourage you to continue to provide such
support, or to begin providing it if you have not in the
past. You are in no way obliged to provide us with any
support at all, and this message is not intended to guilt-
trip you about providing support. If you choose not to
provide support, for whatever reason, you aren't going to
be treated differently on the mailing lists, and your
requests for features aren't going to be prioritized any
differently. If you want to be treated differently, you
can buy a formal support contract, of course, but this
document is about contributions, not support contracts.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q: So if I won't be treated differently, why contribute?
A: The obvious answer is self-interest. If you con-
tribute, it means that the author will have time to work
on stuff that's not of the utmost high priority. People
are constantly asking for things that we would really like
to provide, but for which we have no time. By contribut-
ing, you are literally giving us time to do these things.
The amount of time varies with the contribution, of
course, but if everybody contributes a little bit, it can
add up to a lot.
Q: But everybody isn't required to contribute. If I con-
tribute and nobody else does, doesn't that make me kind of
a sucker?
A: Obviously, we don't think so, but think about this: if
you contribute, then we can point out to others that we've
received contributions, and this will make the idea of
contributing seem more legitimate to them, making it more
likely that they will contribute. So your contribution
has more value than just the money you provide - it also
helps us to raise funds from others.
Q: If I contribute, I want a say in what work gets done.
A: We do sell support contracts, and we will also do
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development work on specification if we feel it is rele-
vant (although you won't get to own it). This can be
quite expensive, though - much more than even the maximum
we'd expect you to donate. So no, contributing doesn't
buy you a say in what work gets done.
Q: I work for a charity that feeds the homeless. Should
my charity contribute?
A: Absolutely not! The idea here is not to take food out
of the mouths of poor people. If donating to us would
mean that somebody in need that you could have helped will
go without help, keep the money. It's not worth it to us.
This goes for providing shelter, psychiatric aid, legal
assistance, and any other similar charity work.
Q: Cool! I work for a university, helping students who
are in need of an education, so we shouldn't contribute,
right?
A: No, that's not quite what we mean. Sure, if you work
for an organization that provides free education to needy
people, at whatever level, then we'd rather you did that
than support us. But if your university has a big budget
for running the computer center, can afford to plant nice
gardens and maintain nice lawns, and maybe has all its
dorms wired for ethernet, then even if you qualify as a
nonprofit under federal law (or the law in your own coun-
try) you should still contribute. DHCP is just as much a
part of your infrastructure as your campus wiring.
Q: This software came on a CD that I bought. Haven't I
already contributed?
A: If you're seeing this notice, and you didn't see a
notice saying that the people who sold you your CD con-
tributed to us, then no, you haven't already contributed.
In general, we encourage people to include this software
on their distributions if they feel it would be useful,
and we do not require them to contribute in exchange for
that privilege.
Q: I've contributed to the development of this software by
submitting bug reports and patches. Why should I also
contribute money?
A: When you contributed these bug reports and patches, was
there zero effort involved on our part in integrating the
patches or figuring out what was wrong? Probably not.
Bug reports and patches can be extremely valuable, and we
can't say that in no event do they qualify you to get out
of contributing - after all, we're leaving that up to your
judgement anyway, aren't we? But unless your contribution
was pretty massive, and is actually in this distribution,
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we aren't likely to agree with you about this.
Q: Software should be free. You have no right to ask for
money to support this effort.
A: You are entitled to that opinion, but please don't
raise it on the mailing list, as it will tend to get peo-
ple excited. Please remember that while copying software
is generally a very cheap process, creating it is not.
The amount of work that's gone into this software package
is quite significant, and there's plenty more work to do.
If you happen to be in college, working toward your
degree, and have no social life (and yes, I've been there
and done that) then it can seem like there's no additional
cost to hacking on software - after all, it's fun, isn't
it? While this is true, it is also true that you're a lot
better off with this software than you would have been
with the software I wrote in college. Enough said?
Q: Can't I contribute work instead of software?
A: We'd like to encourage that to some extent, and are
indeed trying to bring some developers into the fold, but
you shouldn't expect that your willingness to do this
translates directly into an opportunity. For example, you
may want very much to work for [insert the name of your
favorite commercial Linux vendor here], but unless you
have the appropriate skills, they like you, they're will-
ing to pay what you need, and they have work that's appro-
priate to your skills, you're not going to get hired
there.
Q: I don't contribute to the Free Software Foundation -
why do you rate?
A: You should contribute to the Free Software Foundation
too!
Q: I don't contribute to [insert name of your local food
bank here]. Why do you rate?
A: If you feel bad about not contributing to the local
food bank, this is a very easy problem to solve, and we
encourage you to do so.
Q: Once I've contributed once, am I done?
A: We'd like to encourage you to contribute once a year.
If you want, we can send you a reminder notice on the year
anniversary of your original contribution. If you don't
specifically ask for this, we won't force it on you. No
salesperson will call. No spam will be sent. We defi-
nitely won't try to convince you that it's been a year
since you last contributed when it hasn't been a year yet.
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Q: I don't have you in my budget this year.
A: Fine, put us in your budget for next year!
Q: It's really hard to do charitable contributions at my
organization.
A: We'd be happy to sell you a product instead. If you
choose to go down this route, what we'l sell you is a
license for some number of clients and a CD. Just let us
know how many DHCP clients you have, and we'll use the
following schedule to figure out how much to invoice you
(shipping is included on orders of $100 or more). Even if
you can do charitable contributions, you might want to use
this schedule as a guideline for figuring out how much to
donate. It is only a guideline, of course - if the
amounts listed feel like too much or too little to you, do
what seems appropriate.
$10k for businesses supporting >10k nodes
$5k for charities supporting >10k nodes
$2.5k for businesses supporting >1k nodes
$1k for charities supporting >1k nodes
$500 for businesses with >500 nodes
$250 for charities with >500 nodes
$200 for businesses with >150 nodes
$100 for charities with >150 nodes
$100 for businesses with <150 nodes
$50 for charities with <150 nodes
$25 for home use, client or server
$0.10 to $1 per client for businesses that are reselling the
client, depending on volume.
Q: Are you nuts? I live in [insert your country name
here] and the typical annual salary for a programmer is
less than what you're asking me to contribute!
A: We leave the choice of how much to contribute up to
you. Really. We aren't kidding.
Q: Can I contribute with my credit card?
A: Yes. The details haven't been ironed out at this
writing, but if you send mail to dhcp-contribu-
tions@isc.org, we'll work it out. By the time you read
this, we may have a web interface set up - if so, it will
be linked in at http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html.
SEE ALSOdhcpd.conf(5), dhcpd.leases(5), dhclient.conf(5),
dhcpd(8), dhclient(8), RFC2132, RFC2131.
AUTHOR
The Internet Software Consortium DHCP Distribution was
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written by Ted Lemon <mellon@isc.org> under a contract
with Vixie Labs. Funding for this project was provided
through the Internet Software Consortium. Information
about the Internet Software Consortium can be found at
http://www.isc.org/isc.
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