[smith]

OK FOAMers,

This is a heartfelt plea, not a demand, not an attempt at coercion or any other malfeasance!

I am not employed by OpenCFD and I do not receive any gifts from them (other than OpenFOAM 2.2 that is! :-) ), and I have never been near a mental asylum ;-)
.. so read this:

OpenFOAM is no mere technical item of geekware, it is a commercial strength money-making (or tenure-making, as the case may be) tool! So users like us should be contributing money from our own pockets, in however small amounts, according to our means, to OpenCFD for their wonderful product. We need to help keep OpenCFD solvent. My suggestion is that whoever you are, man, woman, communist or capitalist, please send a personal cheque today to either Henry or Chris or Mattijs.

I can't make you do this, I can't even gurantee OpenCFD want me to tell you this! I post this message freely and of my own accord, without any thought of others needing to follow my suggestions, it is simply an open letter to all FOAM users. After this post I will not mention the topic again unless prompted.

This is a pure honesty arrangement at present. Those OpenCFD guys can spend your cheque on their groceries or their next movie ticket, whatever. But the intention is to help these guys set up a more permanent PayPal type of contribution system. OpenFOAM can remain free under GPL as far as I know, but nothing forbids OpenCFD from setting up a purely voluntary honesty system whereby heavy OpenCFD users can ease any freeloading guilt by making small (or LARGE!) donations to OpenCFD.

In the mean time I'm suggesting we all send them a bit of start-up cash to get some kind of PayPal system up and running (hopefully such things do not require long term maintenance fees?). Failing that, I'd suggest OpenCFD still releases OpenFOAM under GPL but adds some low maintenance web forms, or maybe OpenCFD can simply post an address where contributions can be mailed, that would allow users to make contributions in a transparent way that does not incur administrative costs for OpenCFD (forget about receipts maybe? Somehow set it up as a charitable donation to avoid tax penalties for OpenCFD?)

How about if folks? I'm gonna' send my weeks allowance for coffee and chocolate bars to them today (it's more than you'd imagine---I only drink gourmet espresso :-D ).

It's not the amount you send them that matters anyway, send them a dollar, send them 50 cents! What really matters is the number of us who spontaneously decide to support OpenCFD that will be the telling factor in helping them pay their bills.

---
If you're dirt poor but somehow manage to use OpenFOAM then you can still consider some kind of donation "in kind" like contributing your codes and documentation, (see the recent threads on the need for heavier FOAM programming documentation and manuals).

You don't have to write THE OpenFOAM manual, just tell everyone how you wrote your nifty application in a transparent way, and post it to some kind of forum like "The Official OpenFOAM Users Contributed Documented Unofficial Code Repository" (intended as a mouthful!) that you could request OpenCFD setup for users to send quality code to. User feedback would quickly weed out bogus submissions, and if storage oveflows well then OpenCFD can just delete any contributions they care to, no questions asked OK? All the fancy Wiki stuff and comprehensive programming manuals can wait.

First we all need to help OpenCFD stay afloat.

Second we need to all be more community-minded and share our documentation and code sources. Don't tell me your notes are all "on paper"! Do you people never document your projects inline??? What's wrong with you?!!!
...excuse the haranguing, I mean it only in jest :-)