mungkie wrote: ....
I have spent a lot of time and money messing with this, and sort of feel a bit possesive especially as some people will probably make money from this and everyone hopefully will save money by its use.
We all do. Some more, some less. Some considerably more than you have. So please see it in context.
I am a bit fuzzy what the funds are to pay for. If it is for your time - good luck with the effort; I have some doubts this is a fruitful avenue. You are addressing a very small market indeed.
If it is for code proper, you better research the license context of your work very thoroughly. There might be some minefields you want to think about twice before crossing. The policies set forth by the FSF you suggest donating to might not be particularly helpful here.
If you want to make money of that, I think the best route would be to find somebody/some company willing to integrate this into a product. There might be some consulting revenue to be made.
Note that the Raspberry - besides all the hype - is not exactly what a company worth its powder would bet on - that product is positioned as an educational tool, and for good reasons - you might also read this as "think twice before betting the farm on this". I dont want to sound overly negative, but in summary I think the Raspberry is a fringe platform for this kind of application. This has been discussed at length on the developer list.
Be aware that your contribution (if you mean the HAL driver) is just a small piece of an overall effort. Also, you might be a tad early thinking about fundraising - get it to have some exposure first, like moving some real machines of several people. Asking money too early for a something which isnt a marketable product yet is a surefire way of killing it, and there are some examples even in this community.
If you want to contribute the code to the LinuxCNC project, that would be most welcome, and I am happy to help at merging it once it is mature enough.
- Michael
Good stuff.