OER Donations-Based Funding Model

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Description

"On this model, a project deemed worthy of support by the wider community requests, and receives, donations. Donations are in turn managed by a non-profit foundation, which may apply them to operating expenses or, if amounts are sufficient, seek to establish an endowment. Numerous open source and open content projects are funded in this manner, including Wikipedia (Foote, 2005) and the Apache Foundation. (Apache, 2005) It is worth noting that such donations are often supplemented with purchases of branded products; the Spread Firefox initiative is a good example of this. (Mozilla Foundation, 2005) Variations of this model exist. For example, contributions to the Apache project are owned by the contributor and licensed to the project. However, in another model (sometimes called the conservancy model), property is assigned to the organization, which then acts as a steward." (Everitt, 2004) (http://www.downes.ca/files/FreeLearning.pdf)