On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
At 23:22 +0000 5/11/08, Thomas Dalton wrote:
2008/11/5 Giacomo M-Z solebaciato@googlemail.com:
obviously has money to spare - what more point would you like?
- That was 2 years ago, what relevance does it have now?
- We use Freenode a lot, it makes sense to support them. It wasn't
just giving money away randomly because they had more than they knew what to do with.
My guess is that some people who might donate in the future would not donate (at all) unless they felt that their money would go to the Foundation only. It is a given that the Foundation donated 5,000 USD to a third party, and hence might choose to repeat that donation or a similar donation in the future.
It is, of course, a no-brainer that the Foundation should be able to support other organisations if it supports its mission. I'm not going to get into the debate about whether this particular donation is reasonable, but to say that donations to third parties are wrong per se is, I think, wrong-headed. The real question is about whether the donation supports, directly or indirectly, the Foundation's mission.