No money from this fund has gone towards salaries but there are many necessities that do need financing: examples are new, or enhanced, computing equipment and travel to team meetings (the volunteers come from many different countries, so getting together occasionally is a non-trivial exercise).
This is why we are appealing to you for contributions to the fund. Any sum will be much appreciated; the amount need not be large as small contributions add up to very useful amounts. Contributions of suitable equipment and software will also be of great value. This appeal is both to you as an individual author and to you as a member of a group or as an employee: please encourage your department or your employer to contribute towards sustaining our work.
We should like to see funded projects that make considerable use of LaTeX (e.g. conferences and research teams who use it to publish their work, and electronic research archives using it) include contributions to this fund in their budgets. We are also asking commercial organisations to assess the benefits they gain from using, or distributing, a well-supported LaTeX and to make appropriate contributions to the fund in order that we can continue to maintain and improve the product. If you work for, or do business with, such an organisation, please bring to the attention of the relevant people the existence and needs of the project.
In particular, we ask that all the large number of organisations and businesses that distribute LaTeX, within other software or as part of a CD-ROM collection, should consider pricing all products containing LaTeX at a level that enables them to make regular donations to the fund from the profit on these items. We also ask all authors and publishers of books about LaTeX to consider donating part of the royalties to the fund.
Contributions should be sent to one of the following addresses:
TeX Users Group, P.O. Box 1239, Three Rivers, CA 93271-1239, USA
Fax: +1 209 561 4584 Email: tug@mail.tug.orgUK TUG, 1 Eymore Close, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 4LB, UK
Fax: +44 121 476 2159 Email: uktug-enquiries@tex.ac.uk
Cheques should be payable to the user group (TUG or UKTUG) and be clearly marked as contributions to the LaTeX3 fund. Many thanks to all of you who have contributed in the past and thanks in advance for your generosity in the future.