www.fabiankeil.de/gehacktes/privoxy-moral-license/

The Privoxy Moral License

Quoting Poul-Henning Kamp, the inventor of the Varnish Moral license:

Software development may be open, and the result shared with an Open Source Software licence, but the actual hours of programming are not gratis.

Just like everybody else, I need money for mortgage, kids and food, money I make by doing things with computers, for people who are willing to pay for that.

One of the things I do for money, is develop Varnish, and the Varnish Moral License is the vehicle I invented for the paperwork.

Given that the Varnish Moral License seems like a great idea and is apparently working for a couple of years now I'm copying the concept and am offering a Privoxy Moral License that works somewhat similarly:

Happy Privoxy users tell me that they want a Privoxy Moral License
I send them an invoice
They pay the invoice
I develop Privoxy

In case you're wondering:

Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.

I'm one of the Privoxy developers.

Current status as of 2025-01-08:

Waiting for takers. Cash in hand: 0 EUR.

FAQ

How much money is needed?

I'd like to raise at least 3500 EUR per month.

Really, you're that cheap?

Yes, but only when I do things I really, really like to do, from the comfort of my own flat.

I'll be happy to send you a quote if you want me for something else, drop me an email.

What do we get in return?

A Moral License to make any kind of big or small money running Privoxy on your various systems, without feeling the least bit bad about one of the poor suckers who significantly contributed to the software.

On a more concrete level, the Privoxy project gets more of my time and attention which I use to improve the tool which makes your browsing experience more pleasant.

If you contributed more than EUR 240 in the past 12 months, you will be mentioned as sponsor in at least one commit message which is likely to make it into official announcements and maybe even into a security advisory (CVE request pending) on oss-sec.

I have a contract with Next Vector Security, do I also need a Privoxy Moral License?

No.

Nobody needs to buy a license, Privoxy is Free and Open Source Software, and paying a Privoxy Moral License is entirely voluntary

Second: Next Vector Security already supports Privoxy development, so you already contribute to the project that way.

Third: Thanks, your support is much appreciated.

What is your track record, are you actually the right person for the job?

fk@t520 ~/git/privoxy $today
2025-01-08
fk@t520 ~/git/privoxy $git whodaman
Fabian Keil is da man (branch: master; commits in branch: 7955)

   1 Fabian Keil made 5204 commits (65.418%).
   2 hal9 made 793 commits (9.96857%).
   3 oes made 622 commits (7.81898%).
   4 jongfoster made 446 commits (5.60654%).
   5 swa made 243 commits (3.05468%).
   6 Lee made 203 commits (2.55185%).
   7 David Schmidt made 99 commits (1.2445%).
   8 Roland Rosenfeld made 96 commits (1.20679%).
   9 morcego made 54 commits (0.678818%).
  10 steudten made 38 commits (0.477687%).
  11 joergs made 29 commits (0.364551%).
  12 Ian Silvester made 26 commits (0.326838%).
  13 Sarantis Paskalis made 21 commits (0.263985%).
  14 Gabor Liptak made 12 commits (0.150849%).
  15 proactivesvcs made 11 commits (0.138278%).
  16 haroon made 11 commits (0.138278%).
  17 iwanttokeepanon made 10 commits (0.125707%).
  18 markm68k made 6 commits (0.0754243%).
  19 mal0rd made 6 commits (0.0754243%).
  20 Maxim Antonov made 5 commits (0.0628536%).
  21 agotneja made 4 commits (0.0502828%).
  22 gjmurphy made 3 commits (0.0377121%).
  23 Joshua Rogers made 3 commits (0.0377121%).
  24 dessent made 2 commits (0.0251414%).
  25 anonymous made 2 commits (0.0251414%).
  26 Fabrice Fontaine made 2 commits (0.0251414%).
  27 root made 1 commits (0.0125707%).
  28 Maxim Khon made 1 commits (0.0125707%).
  29 Ivan Romanov made 1 commits (0.0125707%).
  30 Ingo Blechschmidt made 1 commits (0.0125707%).

Take this with a grain of salt as I also committed patches from other people while the Privoxy project was still using CVS.

On the other hand I also do various things that aren't reflected in git stats at all, like maintaining parts of the project infrastructure, dealing with license issues etc.

Which license will you use for the code you're writing?

Code for Privoxy itself will be licensed under the GNU GPLv2 or later. Newly created tools will be licensed under a more liberal license which is already used for existing Privoxy tools like Privoxy-Filter-Test, Privoxy-Log-Parser, uagen and Privoxy-Regression-Test

Does your Privoxy Moral License also cover unrelated works like ElectroBSD or zogftw etc.?

Sure.

I actually use ElectroBSD to develop Privoxy and backup Privoxy-related code with zogftw so clearly these works are actually Privoxy-related and qualify.

This looks fishy, can I still donate to the Privoxy project directly?

Yes, you can.

Did Poul-Henning Kamp actually give you permission to copy and paste so much content from his website?

Yes, he did.

Please also take a look at the rest of the VML FAQ as I didn't copy and paste everything (yet).