A donation? What is it for?

ChristianHJW spoke to Frank Klemm, the long-time developer of MPC who took over from Andree Buschmann, and he found out that Frank's PC is out of order. Its certainly not like he didn't have the money to repair it, no. But you maybe know this feeling: There is something you have to do, say repair the car, but you can't find your toolbox anymore. This is all so frustrating, as you know its a lot of work and even the first necessity to start working on it is missing, you decide to take the bus instead...

This wasn't the only reason that he didn't continue to program like he used to. But our hope is that with a new, fully setup PC for him we could give him the 'tool' to actually start coding again and show him that we REALLY do care about his work, and appreciate his outstanding work on MPC. Frank confirmed that he will accept the PC.


So what could result from this?

When Frank will be productive again with a new PC, we will likely see a finalized SV 7.5 of MPC. He may also pick up work on SV8 again, or concentrate on something completely different. Whatever he will do, we are sure that he will put this PC to good use, and that the work of this gifted programmer will benefit the community. However, don't think of this as a payment and obligation for him to immediately program something. It is rather an acknowledgement and a chance.


The donation has ended. For any questions about a pending donation, PM me.


List of people who donated:

rpop, sthayashi, indybrett, MachineHead, jrj, sv3n, seanyseansean, grombulk, ddrawley, Zao, kdo, sozinterror, BennyX, Tomb, ChristianHJW, JohnV, user, lostgallifreyan, scottc, Spoon, Rommel, Floydian Slip, TURBO, Guruboolez, atici, NumLOCK, tanfenton, ancl, Beast1979, Lazarus, honz318712, Dologan, pj, ears, Ariakis, DotNoir, sshd, qristus, Ganymed, harashin, AgentMil, BetaBoy/CoreCodec, huanjo, Treefingers, Jack Comics, Download-This, synchros, AndyMutz, Dibrom/Hydrogenaudio.org, RodoDendro, Destroid, NickSD, S_O, damjang, TheBashar, Loke, DM-UK, 2Bdecided, Ivan Dimkovic, Sunhillow, Toroco, tiki4, ff123, Entr_opy, j8ee, Lev, ssamadhi97, alancienne/xtrem-audio.com, md`, hödyr, robUx4, Doctor, Gecko, Radioactive Man, Wombat, s.tsuyoshi, Tri, JensRex, zegilles, jasnic02, SometimesWarrior, donovansmith, Halcyon, Case, Guigui, anishbenji, Supachikn, Tronic, music_man_mpc, Vertigo, Discantus, Frodoontop, Deimos

(There have been anonymous donations.)

Thank you all very much for your support!

We had to upgrade the PayPal account to a Premium account in order to accept all donations. Also, please don't donate an amount less than 1 Euro, since PayPal would eat up most of it with the donation fee.

Thank you so much for all the donations so far! The post will be updated with all donations!

So, lets see if all the people who promised to donate in the first poll remember what they said they will give for Frank's new PC .....

I never voted either way.

I did however put my money where I believe it will do some good for anyone interested in this.

If Mr. Klemm decides to pick this up and go again it would be great.

Thanks CiTay for doing something about it.

A stupid question:
Is there a way to donate without credit card? Ya know, these aren't so common among old europeans
Transfer to a german bank account would be ideal

I'm still going to donate my soundcard, and once I get my paycheck I will donate some money as well.

Sweet! I was wondering when this was going to happen. I have a new credit card coming in the mail, I'll donate as soon as it arrives!

edit changed knew to new

Of course, send me a private message and i will give you the necessary details. As mentioned, bank transfers within the EU don't cost more than national transfers.

Interesting to see how long it will take to reach 1150 euros. Even HA hasn't received that much from donations yet.

To JohnV, point taken, donation made.

To CiTay, donation made, thanks for coordinating this.

I voted for 10 ?/$ but I havent a creditcard, so....
Sorry! Is there any other way?

Big_Berny

Yes, send me a Private Message for bank transfer details.

Agreed. Fixed (for me anyway).

It seems there are people reluctant to donate because we havent announced what hardware gets chosen.

Rest assured we are in a close dialogue with Frank about what parts can be reused from his old PC, and what new parts he wants to have. The decision is his, not ours ....

I will throw in €20 when you have collected €500.

my 2 € cents are done
(wasn't counted in the poll, due to view = null vote)
yeah, my old PayPal account seems to have been useful at least once. well, what i said earlier, to use paypal, you had to get the premium account.
btw, how much does it 'eat' ?

Thank you very much for all your donations! It goes along very well.



Fees already made up more than 17 Euros so far. The previous prediction for the fees didn't include the extra 1% fee for payments from foreign countries (i.e. for payments from the USA in US $). Total fees could grow to over 70 Euros.

I wouldn't cap it at 1100, just get a better PC if it goes over...

If my wife would let me (not a chance ) for programming two LCDs would help (not sure linux can have 2 screens like XP?), then the source and debugging is on one screen and program running on the other.

Anyhow, dig deep people MPC is useful.

Right, although I wouldn't expect the donation speed to continue this fast, CiTay said that he will consider raising the target to maybe 1350.
Gotta admit that it's been quite impressive. 369 € in about 4 hours, so far.

Points well taken. I was just waiting for HA to setup other payment option than Paypal. Due to my previous experience and my personal stance against Paypal, I didn't want to use Paypal. But since I opened one account (again!) to donate for Frank Klemm, I took this opportunity to give my share to HA community as well.

IMHO, we shouldn't limit the contribution amount. This way we may be able to add some niceties when we have enough fund in addition to the original plan. Moreover, some late comers who won't see this post before the donation period closed, may feel to be left out in this party of giving something back to Frank.

Yeah, unbelievable! That's great!

I dont believe we will easily reach over the original target we set, but i'd like to be surprised positively of course. Even if we wouldnt reach the target at all, i am convinced we could still build a pretty nice machine for him, so the project would not be in question at all because of that.

Actually, i am more and more looking forward to the day when we ring on Frank's door and bring him the new baby. Expect a series of pretty nice pictures about this day being published here from my side, so you will finally have the chance to see how your hero is looking like .... LOL .....

I really enjoy using Musepack, and I feel it is right to give something back.

Yet 50€ more for a good cause

MPC, the best since the beginning. GO Frank!

Yes let's forget about the forum rules just for this thread and rave freely about MPC!

Yes, hardware can also be donated, contact me for that. But remember that the hardware must be shipped to Germany. Depending on where you live, for some things this might become too expensive to justify the donation.

About the donation limit: I never expected this to proceed so well. If we should reach the limit soon and people still have the urge to donate, it can run a bit longer. There are several possibilities to upgrade the PC some more.

I don't know what the final amount will be, but in case it goes real high (>350 Euro unused?), may I suggest adding a TFT flat panel ?

It really is a pleasure to use, because all the text looks so much sharper. For a programmer this is becoming a must have IMHO. Plus without this, upgrading a computer is not a full upgrade

Shame on you, Chris! Pictures only? MKV clips are the least you should offer! We want to see Frank faint at 25 FPS (at least)

Donation made.

It only remains to be seen if Citay doesn't end up fleeing to Greece with all the money. (j/k)

LOL

Where is the bloke ? Seems he was up late last night, so there is nobody to update his donation progress bar since a couple of hours ....

Off topic, but as lonf as you have one of the correct GFX cards, then, yes, Linux does support two Monitors, but only in X i think.

Kristian

Don't come now to Greece it is snowing...

Done... Enjoy your new PC Frank!!!

Sorry sorry, the bloke is back... even Admins need sleep. Anyway, major status update. We're at 67% now, keep it up!

Where exactly do you live in Germany, CiTay?

What happens if we don't reach the desired amount of money?

We can reuse a lot of parts from Frank's old PC then. Dont worry, even with the money we have right now, his new PC will become reality, even if the 'motivation kick ass factor' for him to do more with computers and less with his DVD player and TV would be smaller then ....

I will donate again. There will probably be others who will do the same.

And don't forget that some people donate via bank transfer. Those donations can take a couple of days until they arrive, so we will get another little boost from that.

I personally got PMs from at least 3 people already having donated via bank transfer to CiTay directly, with about 80,- € together ( 50,- € alone from Tronic, the MCF inventor ) .....

I donated 30 € via bank transfer. I don't know how fast these things go, but it will probably take a few days.

Edit: I just checked the "help files" of my homebanking. It should take about three days . Maybe four. So it could be as late as friday.

If we don't reach our goal, I'll be willing to donate another $20 once I get paid (which will be at the end of the month).

Frank is gonna get a new PC la la la.... we are almost there and if that total don't have the bank transfers on there, then we are there already!!!

w00t... this is called appreciation for a man's work...

Thanks everyone for chipping in...

The status bar layout has been updated, because we will probably go above the 1150 Euro goal that we initially set, once the bank donations come in. You can still donate. All extra money will be spent on upgrading the PC, there will be nothing going to waste here. Again, already a thank you to all donators, the donation process is nothing less than amazing. The next status update will be coming in a few hours.

You might want to read this:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Xinerama-HOWTO.html

Basically, you can have as many video cards or cards with multiple outputs and screens with different sizes and have a very amorphous desktop (i recall an example of having a non rectangular wall of monitors with a hole)

So yes, it is XP that is just "catching on" (but then i have seen video drivers in earlier windows versions do the "dual monitor" stuff)

You can also redirect errors to another card/monitor working in a text mode console (like an old mono/ttl)

In short, yes, you can.

Congratz with the quick fund raising, i hope these things were considered more often in open source projects. I was also wondering if the earlier MPC develpers should get something too

The first bank donation just came in. 5% to go until we reach the donation goal.

OMG FFS that's incredible! 95% in only 3 days! That's amazing!

No offence, but you've posted 3 times in this thread and I don't see your donation up on the list?

Yes you're right. Sentence corrected.

I'm only a student, currently I don't have a work, I don't have a credit card nor a bank account...I'd have to ask to my father to make the donation but he's not interested in MPC and he's very diffident to use internet for money transfers...
if i had a job i would have given you some money. I'll try to convince my father.

Sorry.