'Tis the season.

[Robert J. Hansen]

'Tis the season for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Winter Solstice, New
Year's, or whatever your favorite holiday is.  It's a time to be
gracious and to remember to say "please" and "thank you", and also a
time for charitable giving.

It's very hard--if not impossible--to reward the GnuPG developers for
their labors.  To whom should a donation be given?  To the user who
first spotted a bug, the other user who tracked it down precisely, the
developer who fixed it, the sysadmin who hosts the project?  What about
to the mailing list, where so many questions get answered by people who
have no official connection with GnuPG whatsoever?

There are no good answers to this.  The best that can be done is to
issue virtual beer tokens, to say "thank you", and maybe to do something
for a charity with similar goals to that of the GnuPG crew.

So: to all the developers, to all the bugfinders, to all the people who
patiently answer questions on mailing lists, to everyone who contributes
to signal and diminishes noise--thank you, very much, for making this
community as much fun as it is, and for your role in making GnuPG as
high quality a product as it is.  Consider yourselves to all have a beer
token issued by me, payable on demand should we ever meet face to face.

This year, as with last year, I will be donating to the Free Software
Foundation with a note that it's in thanks for the GnuPG Project.  I
encourage anyone who is interested in doing likewise to take a look at:

	https://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom