Free opensource software projects need the support of their users to evolve. Programmers spend alot of time trying to make the code efficient, bug-free, and user-friendly. In an area where security is a primary concern, like for public internet services, the time required to roll safe code is often higher than it would be for some other projects. There are design, coding, testing, debugging, and auditing sessions. And at times even restructuring when required to allow the software to be more manageable for the forthcoming new features it should integrate.

There are many ways one can use to support the project. One is to help it maintain public exposure by providing hosting and bandwidth for a mirror. This obviously only should be done on stable connections, it can then become useful for people to find a mirror closer to their location, and so that at all times at least one mirror remains up if others are ever temporarily down. The mmondor.gobot.ca DNS pool of addresses can then be updated once a day, verifying the availability and stability of the mirrors. An FTP account or other method can be used to mirror the site regularly.

Another way is to audit the software against potential security, portability issues and bugs, as well as test the software. Beta testers are welcome to track the CVS repository tree and to propose diff/patches whenever necessary. Also considered a donation is the time other programmers can put in contributing third party software related to the projects. Although this may not necessarily affect mmsoftware directly, some of that software may be very useful for many mmsoftware users.

It is also possible to sponsor the work on a particular opensource project or feature of one of the existing project by material and/or money donations. For example, one may want the software to support another UNIX-style system for which the software does not currently work for some reason, and provide the necessary hardware and/or software tools to allow to do it.

As we are mostly dealing with BSD licensed software it is also possible to hire us in order to develop a closed-source implementation with custom-specific needs of one of the existing projects. The customer would decide whether or not the new branch should eventually be donated, back to the main public repository, to fall back under the same BSD-license as well (possibly with an advertising clause in the license text).

Finally, a thing which is always encouraging and doesn't cost much, is to send positive feedback, via email or on freshmeat, about the features you enjoy in mmsoftware, if you decide to use it. Gifts are also welcome.

We appreciate your contribution to our common goal. We would like to assure you that we use it to the best of our efforts to help the project evolve.

Matthew Mondor