Currently, Power Progress Community, our not-for-profit association responsible for running the notebook project, consists of around twenty members that pay the annual fee of 30 euros. In addition, there are recurrent donors, which are another twenty (being five of them members of the association)
MISSION
- Knowledge in solidarity and in the service of liberation from conditions of constraint and oppression and for freedom of choice.
- Creating social conditions of equal opportunities.
- Dissemination of the conscious use and utilisation of freedom-respecting technologies that do not become an information mine for “surveillance capitalism”.
- Dissemination in all sections of the population and especially those far removed from the world of information technology.
- Make the world an happier place for everyone.
- Design Open Hardware which is accessible to the widest possible range of people.
- Facilitate the re-use of dismissed or low-cost hardware by means of open source and free software.
- Encourage people to use open source and free software.
- Adopting the Open Science paradigm that will facilitate a convenient collaboration among all involved subjects, where research data, lab notes and other research results are freely available to anyone as soon as possible and taking advantage of modern communication technologies, letting anyone to redistribute and reuse anything without restrictions, following the rule “as open as possible and as closed as necessary”.
Paying 30 euros to become a member of the association allows you to take part in the decisions made about the PowerPC notebook project, by participating in our internal discussions.
Collected funds are used to support the expenses required for the various websites we run on commercial hosting companies and to pay for the donation platform, a commercial product we use for managing the funds, at the moment for the PowerPC project only.
How the membership fee will be used
Fixed costs
- web hosting of our websites – which is around 310€ a year
- https://www.powerprogress.org/ and the others third levels domains
- https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/ and the others third level domains
- plugin for managing the donation campaign that interfaces with PayPal that cost around 125-500€ a year
- bank and tax bank costs which is around 200€ a year
Variable costs related to our involvement
- association activities such as the switch from closed source software to open source and preferably self-hosted and alternative softwares such as nextcloud, collabora, irc, jitsi, BigBlueButton;
- regenerate old hardware, and support the knowledge and passion transfer for alternative architectures to the younger generations, as well as teaching them how to become accustomed with Linux and programming (example Revivo with Scratch School project ).
Based on what is left, the remaining funds will be used for supporting activities such as:
- buying pieces of hardware or software useful for our projects like the PowerPC laptop
- finance ppc64 big endian patches, u-boot configuration,other software needs
- finance other open hardware designs
- finance open hardware notebook chassis design
- participating to conferences
- printing posters, leaflets, T-Shirts
- support and collaborate with other associations
Our association focus in supporting alternative technologies as a way to guarantee the freedom of choice, allowing anyone to opt for solutions that are not mainstream, even at the cost of minor downsides. The more we are, the more viable these alternatives becomes.
Joining the association is a win win situation if you like to be protagonist in our projects because its a coherent and happy move. With your membership to the PPC association, we could be more intelligent and strong to face our goal. The Association mission is not limited to this project but is open to other projects that aim passion for Free Software and Hardware and
“Knowledge in solidarity and in the service of liberation from conditions of constraint and oppression and for freedom of choice.”, “Creating social conditions of equal opportunities.” and other goals.
A RISC-V mainboard module was recently announced for the Framework laptop. Why not partner with Framework as well?
Perhaps the Framework project would yield the funding for a second, own-design laptop?
Thanks Eirikr to have contact us, we are already in contact with Framework, our motherboard mxm separated video card doesn’t permit to be fitted in the Framework laptop, but we hope to find new opportunities to collaborate in the future. In the same time if you like to help us to improve relationship with other association and groups or collaborate together in some way I suggest you to fill our collaboration survey, thanks! https://survey.powerpc-notebook.org/index.php/782374?lang=en
Why not look into collaboration with the MNT.re community and launch a motherboard or module for that?
The MNT has far more space inside the chassis than the framework and is much more open.
Hi David,
thanks for your suggestion, in fact we are already in contact with MNTre, as soon more people join us and collaborate with us we can open more projects, you are welcome!
If you like to help us to improve relationship with other association and groups or collaborate together in some way I suggest you to fill our collaboration survey, thanks! https://survey.powerpc-notebook.org/index.php/782374?lang=en