The Linux Credit Card | Hacker News Reader

The Linux Credit Card

linuxfoundation.org

86 pointsrobinhoodexe37 comments

I love Linux as much as the next sysadmin, but given how central it is to the bottom lines of so many corporations, there's no way I'm going to donate to it as an individual. Let the companies that profit from it fund it.

I think that's a pretty misguided statement. If you _can_ donate you should. Imagine having to deal with any other platform...

The more people (and companies) donate the better we're all off IMO.

If he can donate to this, he can donate to everything. The "if can, should" principle would have him exhausted of money on much more worthwhile charities long before he'd get round to linux.

What he's saying is that linux is part of a sustainable economic system from which companies profile, so that (now) it does not require individual charitable contributions.

Fair point, but that's not what I meant exactly.

If he "wants to" + "can", then he should.

The argument was against "I can but why should I if companies will", which I think misses the point of contribution. The more the better.

I always find it eyebrow raising to check the corporate membership list, and see Suse sitting as Gold member while Red Hat is down in Silver.

Red Hat would rather use that ~$80,000 to hire another kernel developer, the member ranks are just about political clout.

Because Red Hat never does anything that is about political clout?

No, they aren't donating more to the Linux foundation for political clout.

Or 10,000 man-hours worth of systemd shills (just kidding, they do it for free)

Red Hat spends plenty of money on political clout, just not this specific clout

Why would they donate money for corporate sponsorship ranks if they're already donating so much code? Honest question. I thought they were the second largest contributor to the kernel code base after Intel.

>> A percentage of every purchase made on your Linux Foundation credit card goes back to Linux Foundation <<

Would be nice if they actually mentioned what that percentage is exactly.

I am quite certain that they are not able to disclose that according to their partnership.

Industry standard is about 10 BPS for affinity programs and a bounty for acquiring customers for the bank. No rewards program might make this one higher, maybe 70-110 but none more.

A better plan if you wanted to support Linux would be 2% cashback card that you donate all rewards to Linux.

A an even better plant would be for the issuer to give 2% to the Linux Foundation (or any other non-profit of choice or even a mix), without making the merchant pay for it. The issuers are awash in money.

For affinity cards from this company (UMB/Cardpartner) it's typically 0.3%.

Source: https://www.owasp.org/images/0/08/CardPartner_Kit.pdf

awesome, great sleuthing!

I'm curious what kind of return the linux foundation can get from this, out in the world.

0.3%?! It'd far more effective to get a 2% cash back rewards card like the Double Cash, and donate the money to the Linux Foundation.

Only if you actually remember to donate your rewards balance. Effortless transactions are powerful.

Depending on your payroll provider, you may be able to automate this. (Gusto used to make this easy, though they recently changed it so that each charity has to be signed up with their backend provider. Not sure about other payroll platforms.)

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profil...

Site isn't loading. Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20161201162722/https://www.linux...

Would be nice if we could find out what percentage of the total Linux Foundations donations, payments from member companies and members actually go to the people making useful contributions to Linux developers and related technologies/tool developers, as opposed to "management retreats".

I had one of these 15 years ago. I got a "cute penguin" comment almost every time I used it.

really? now I want one!

Same here. I believe it was via linuxstart.com

Why not just get a card with 1.5% cash back or more and make a donation? The Foundation would get more and it's tax deductible for the cardholder.

You certainly could, but the downside is they are decoupled. With this card, every purchase is coupled with money going to the linux foundation.

It might be less than what you could earn/donate elsewhere, but it gives them an additional source of recurring revenue that they can plan against.

I used to have the FreeBSD version of this card. I never knew how much was being donated, which was disappointing.

I'm holding out for a Docker card.

Why would you donate money to a business that, you know, sells products?

You don't think the Linux Foundation makes money? Heh. The secure BSD project had hard time raising few thousands of dollars last year.

The Linux Foundation is a non-profit, for one, but I don’t see what a BSD project having difficulty raising money has to do with donating to Docker.

I'm moving all my banking away from Wells Fargo because of their involvement with the north dakota access pipeline, and this will be a great replacement for my CC!

Sadly I'm a student and haven't started a line of credit. I'd love to buy one of these but I'd definetly not be allowed.

If it just had no Tux on it.

https://piss.io/how-tux-the-penguin-ruined-it-for-linux-8b22...

I like Tux and am glad its on the credit card; he's the Linux mascot and it wouldn't be the same without him.

Also, that blog post is full of needless profanity and hate. If you wanted to present some kind of reasoned argument against tux being on the card, that was not it.

Linux isn't even close to "ruined". It's extremely useful and in widespread, nearly ubiquitous use for a variety of uses.

It's not a "failure" that GNU/Linux isn't widely used on the desktop. As a fan of UNIX operating systems and open-source software, I don't even really care -- and in fact think Windows is naturally superior for that use case. Microsoft has a structural advantage that enables them to be better at putting out a desktop OS than the open-source community.

Why do so many people think the mark of GNU/Linux's success is whether it's used as a desktop OS by non-technical consumers? Best tool for the job, and all that.

Edit: Just saw that this was written by Jon Hendren (aka @fart on twitter), who can best be described as a comedian. So, this article is probably just trolling anyway.

If I cared about what people who spend too much time on message boards thought, I'd never get anything done. Too much credence is to the comment section.

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