Linux Credit Card Re-Launches

An anonymous reader writes "The all-new Linux Fund Visa Card launched on July 24th. The Linux Fund began in 1999, and lasted until Bank of America bought MBNA and canceled the program earlier this year. Before that time the fund had distributed $100,000 a year on average. US Bank has inked a new deal to resurrect the program with new features. Currently, the project is open to ideas for supporting well-loved and community-supported software that is underfunded. The current list of supported projects includes Debian, Wikipedia, FreeGeek, Freenode, and Blender."

Re:But how do they select projects?

[RuBLed]

You could nominate [linuxfund.org]

Re:firefox mozilla

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Firefox already has a sugar daddy - Google.

Re:Important Question

[JohnFluxx]

DTemp,

    If you borrow $1000 from the bank, then the bank basically ends up $10,000 to spend.
    Check out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-905047436 2583451279 [google.com]
   

Re:Important Question

[Anonymous Coward]

That is bogus. Credit card companies don't drop people with good credit very often at all -- they will hold them for the chance that someday they'll want to buy a $25,000 anniversary ring for their spouse and pay it off over time.

The interest and fees charged to less responsible/capable/cash-flow-endowed/whatever is intended to cover their risk and reduced availability of their own funds.

They make alot (most?) of their money on the per-transaction fees that are charged to the merchants.

Re:Important Question

[asc99c]

Have a look at the cost to vendors of accepting card payments, and you'll probably change your mind about whether they like you. For typical small merchants, there is a 2.5% charge on the purchase cost which the vendor pays to the credit card company. Plenty of stores will pass this directly on to the customer, especially price-sensitive online shops. No doubt the Wal-Marts are only paying closer to 0.5% due to their purchasing power, but it's still quite a bit of money.

For your $50K of charges, your credit card company will have been paid ~ $1000 in fees. The breakdown of that between all the companies involved (Bank Of America, Visa or Mastercard etc) I'm not so sure of. Unless you're constantly ringing up customer services it's fairly certain they will be making a nice profit from your custom.