Dear reader,


      you are reading this document, because you saw that there is a new
      release of gpm available, gpm 1.20.2.

      Unfortunately this release is broken, but that's not a big problem.

      gpm is broken for some time and I did not spent any time to the project
      for about two years.

      Some weeks ago, I was contacted by someone asking me to write a very
      small feature for gpm (a small client program, included in this
      release). I answered the person that I do not have the time to code
      that part, but if he really insists that I should write that code,
      he should think about sponsoring me [0].

      Some days later I recieved an email that he wanted to sponsor me.
      I was a little bit surprised, because it was the first person really
      considering my sponsoring plans.
      
      So I coded that small program and had some views in the old code of
      gpm. There's so much information in it, so many hacks, so many dirty
      tricks and there are still many people using it.

      So I considered to try to spent more time to gpm, perhaps even creating
      a more clean (and better maintainable) version of it.

      But I _am_ actually a pretty busy person, working almost all time, if not
      doing sports (just about 6 hours a week) or sleeping.

      So I thought, perhaps you can help me to get more time for coding FOSS [1]
      in general or gpm in specific:

      My idea is, that if you consider sponsoring my work, I can begin to work less
      "traditionally" and also finance my second study in computer science, which
      I will begin in autumn 2008, if I have the money to do it (living in
      Switzerland is not that cheap).

      I am looking forward to get any feedback from you about this idea
      at nico-gpm-sponsoring (at) schottelius.org.

      Thanks for reading,


            Nico Schottelius, 12. May 2007


      P.S.: GPM is alive!
   
   [0]: Sponsoring information: http://nico.schottelius.org/about/support
   [1]: FOSS: http://nico.schottelius.org/documentations/foss/the-term-foss/