Donations

Donations to UIC

Background. My understanding is that gifts to the University of Illinois Foundation to help support faculty research are now easier for the university to handle than grant contracts. This is the mechanism I recommend for donations above $10000.

How to donate. Contact me for details.

United States tax deductibility. My understanding is that gifts to the University of Illinois Foundation are tax-deductible, but please contact a tax professional for authoritative advice.

Donations to the Bernstein Writing Fund

Background. Donations to the Writing Fund will directly support my projects for writing freely available text, including software packages. (They'll also help convince me that I should stick to an academic career; if you don't donate now, I'll go work for Microsoft! ... Just kidding.)

How to donate. Use PayPal to send your donation to paypal@box.cr.yp.to. Please put Writing Fund in the Subject line. Please use the Note section to say (1) which of my current projects you like and (2) any suggestions for how you'd like me to direct my future efforts.

United States tax deductibility. Donations to the Writing Fund are not tax-deductible.

Public acknowledgments. Donors are listed at https://cr.yp.to/thanks.html#writing in up-to-$100, $100-to-$500, $500-to-$1000, $1000-to-$5000, and $5000-and-up categories. Write "private" at the end of the PayPal Subject line if you would like "Anonymous" to appear in the public acknowledgments instead of your name.

Donations to the Bernstein v. United States Legal Fund

Background. For many years, the United States Department of Commerce used export-control laws to interfere with Internet-security research. The regulations were improved in January 2000, but they still prohibited face-to-face collaboration with foreigners, shifted costs from the government to publishers, and required licensing for answering questions from foreigners, among other problems.

The Bernstein v. United States court case won four First Amendment decisions against the government's previous regulations. The court decisions established that publication of source code is speech, and that the regulations were an unconstitutional censorship system. However, the government appealed the decisions.

The case subsequently challenged the revised regulations under the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment. The government then backed away from several portions of the regulations, so the case is over, at least for now.

How donations worked. The Free Software Foundation had an online form for accepting directed donations to the Bernstein v. United States Legal Fund. 10% of each donation covered FSF's costs; 90% went directly to offsetting the legal costs of work in the court case.

Note that FSF is working on many other projects, and accepts general donations.

United States tax deductibility. My understanding is that donations to the Legal Fund were tax-deductible, but please contact a tax professional for authoritative advice.

Public acknowledgments. Donors are listed at https://cr.yp.to/export/donors.html in up-to-$100, $100-to-$500, $500-to-$1000, $1000-to-$5000, and $5000-and-up categories.