[tdf-discuss] TDF fundraising suggestion - Bitcoin

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Hello,
        At Florian's recommendation I am posting this to the list for
discussion.

The fund raising effort by The Document Foundation recently has been
quite remarkable and no doubt it will continue in this vein.  My
little suggestion is intended to change or remove nothing from the
current state of affairs, merely to add an option to the usual array
of financial options of credit cards, PayPal, cheques and bank
transfers.  The suggestion is, as the subject line indicates, that TDF
consider adding a Bitcoin address for accepting donations.

For those of you unfamiliar with Bitcoin, it is the world's first open
source, peer-to-peer crypto-currency.  Bitcoin uses cryptographic
functions to secure the currency and transactions, while using
peer-to-peer networking to bypass the usual central clearing houses of
currency transactions (e.g. banks and governments).

More detail on Bitcoin, including the original technical paper, is
available on the Bitcoin home page:

http://www.bitcoin.org/

I went into a little further detail on my blog a couple of weeks or so
ago (here: http://www.adversary.org/wp/?p=243), which might serve as
an easier introduction.

When I first emailed the info address for TDF, Bitcoin (BTC) had just
reached parity with the US dollar (USD).  It has stayed consistently
above that since then.  Now it is almost at parity with the British
pound (GBP) and the Euro (EUR).  Current pricing taken from numerous
exchanges and trade between Bitcoin and other fiat currencies is
available on Bitcoin Watch:

http://bitcoinwatch.com/

The increasing value and acceptance of Bitcoin is making it a viable
alternative currency.  In the context of The Document Foundation it
makes it a viable additional channel for revenue.  The more so because
it costs nothing to install the Bitcoin client on a TDF system and add
a Bitcoin payment address to the donations page.  Other organisations,
like the EFF, are already taking this route.

So ... thoughts, opinions?


Regards,
Ben

- -- 
Ben McGinnes  http://www.adversary.org/  Twitter: benmcginnes
    Systems Administrator, Writer, ICT Consultant
Encrypted email preferred - primary OpenPGP/GPG key: 0xA04AE313
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