I e-mailed this suggestion a few weeks ago but I never got a reply. I’m guessing it never went through, so I’ve decided to post it here. I think with the recent news of Haiku not being selected for the GSoC this year, adding Haiku to GoodSearch makes even more sense.
What is GoodSearch? GoodSearch is a search engine that donates 50% of its revenue from user searches to the user’s non-profit organization of choice. A typical search using GS nets about 1 cent (excluding image searches). While that may not sound like much, imagine how many times you use a search engine each day. Multiply that by the number of Haiku users/followers that decide to use GoodSearch and in a few month’s time that could result in a nice amount of money that could go towards furthering Haiku’s development.
GoodSearch is not limited to just search donations. The other methods can net considerably more money. If you shop online (GS covers most major stores), up to 30% of your purchase can be donated to Haiku. There are also surveys, special offers, dining deals, travel deals, and even playing games can generate money that will be given to your non-profit organization of choice (hopefully it’s Haiku!).
I know that simply donating is much easier and much less of a headache, but for some (me included) that simply isn’t an option at this time. As much as I’d love to donate monthly to Haiku, student loans and various other necessities take priority. Still, I (like probably many others) would love to help in any way we can.
I’ve looked at Haiku, Inc.'s NPO status, and I am fairly confident they fall under the requirements to apply to GoodSearch. I’d like to hear what you guys think of this idea, and hopefully we’ll hear from the board members of Haiku, Inc. as well.
GoodSearch is a completely different entity, its purpose is to generate searches through it’s own (well, Yahoo powered) search engine. The benefit to the user is that GoodSearch will donate a portion of the money generated from that search to the user’s non-profit organization of choice.
I haven’t heard of FairSearch until now, but from the links above it seems like an “anti-Google” group made up of envious companies. There are no ties to GoodSearch whatsoever. Thank you for asking though, the names are very similar and I can see why someone would think they are related. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here. =]
So far Haiku isn’t listed on it (well that’s not entirely true, there is a Haiku Elementary School listed), so if you were trying to find it and had no luck, that’s why.
Anyway, does anyone know of another way to get in contact with Haiku, Inc.'s board members? It seems as if this section of the forums rarely gets traffic.