NetBSD/dist/dhcp/common/dhcp-contrib.5

.\"	dhcp-contrib.5
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1996-1999 Internet Software Consortium.
.\" Use is subject to license terms which appear in the file named
.\" ISC-LICENSE that should have accompanied this file when you
.\" received it.   If a file named ISC-LICENSE did not accompany this
.\" file, or you are not sure the one you have is correct, you may
.\" obtain an applicable copy of the license at:
.\"
.\"             http://www.isc.org/isc-license-1.0.html. 
.\"
.\" This file is part of the ISC DHCP distribution.   The documentation
.\" associated with this file is listed in the file DOCUMENTATION,
.\" included in the top-level directory of this release.
.\"
.\" Support and other services are available for ISC products - see
.\" http://www.isc.org for more information.
.TH dhcp-contrib 5
.SH NAME
Contributing to the Internet Software Consortium DHCP Distribution
.SH EXHORTATION
.PP
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
provided funding for it.
.PP
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.
.SH FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
.PP
Q: So if I won't be treated differently, why contribute?
.PP
A: The obvious
answer is self-interest.   If you contribute, 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
contributing, 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.
.PP
Q: But everybody isn't required to contribute.   If I contribute and
nobody else does, doesn't that make me kind of a sucker?
.PP
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.
.PP
Q: If I contribute, I want a say in what work gets done.
.PP
A: We do sell support contracts, and we will also do development work
on specification if we feel it is relevant (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.
.PP
Q: I work for a charity that feeds the homeless.   Should my charity
contribute?
.PP
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.
.PP
Q: Cool!   I work for a university, helping students who are in need of
an education, so we shouldn't contribute, right?
.PP
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 country) you
should still contribute.  DHCP is just as much a part of your
infrastructure as your campus wiring.
.PP
Q: This software came on a CD that I bought.   Haven't I already
contributed?
.PP
A: If you're seeing this notice, and you didn't see a notice saying
that the people who sold you your CD contributed 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.
.PP
Q: I've contributed to the development of this software by submitting bug
reports and patches.   Why should I also contribute money?
.PP
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, we aren't likely
to agree with you about this.
.PP
Q: Software should be free.   You have no right to ask for money to
support this effort.
.PP
A: You are entitled to that opinion, but please don't raise it on the
mailing list, as it will tend to get people 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?
.PP
Q: Can't I contribute work instead of software?
.PP
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 willing to pay what you
need, and they have work that's appropriate to your skills, you're not
going to get hired there.
.PP
Q: I don't contribute to the Free Software Foundation - why do you rate?
.PP
A: You should contribute to the Free Software Foundation too!
.PP
Q: I don't contribute to [insert name of your local food bank here].
Why do you rate?
.PP
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.
.PP
Q: Once I've contributed once, am I done?
.PP
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 definitely won't try to convince you that it's been a year
since you last contributed when it hasn't been a year yet.
.PP
Q: I don't have you in my budget this year.
.PP
A: Fine, put us in your budget for next year!
.PP
Q: It's really hard to do charitable contributions at my organization.
.PP
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.
.PP
.nf
        $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.
.fi
.PP
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!
.PP
A: We leave the choice of how much to contribute up to you.   Really.
We aren't kidding.
.PP
Q: Can I contribute with my credit card?
.PP
A: Yes.   The details haven't been ironed out at this writing, but if you
send mail to dhcp-contributions@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.
.SH SEE ALSO
dhcpd.conf(5), dhcpd.leases(5), dhclient.conf(5), dhcpd(8),
dhclient(8), RFC2132, RFC2131.
.SH AUTHOR
The Internet Software Consortium DHCP Distribution was 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
.B http://www.isc.org/isc.