I totally understand that but I'm pretty sure that this situation won't
change in the short time. We have a small community of people that really
care about free software, this little community is divided over the small
amount of Free Distributions (available on the FSF website for download). In
top of that only a few will donate, and only a few will have the possibility
to dedicate time to a project like this.
This is the sad reality. I already donated (and I will do that again when the
possibility appears) and I know that a lot of people here already donated
more than me but the problem still persists. I think that most donation
should be concentrated in "core programs" that people really need and are
available only on others non-free Distributions. As an example, we already
saw that a lot of people start using Trisquel and love it, but then stop
using it just because there is no Drivers for their Wireless Card (as an
example), and since we can't give them support for that (since it is against
the Trisquel forum rules) they go back to Ubuntu or anything like that. I'm
not saying that those rules must be changed, just that this is a real issue.
As an example. If I had the choice between donating to Trisquel or donating
for a team to create more free drivers and free firmwares of well know and
very used hardware, I would donate for the last one, for a simple reason, by
improving this I was improving (indirectly) Trisquel itself, and because of
that a lot of people would start to use Trisquel since there will be no
problem with the hardware, and maybe those people will donate more to
Trisquel than I ever could donate myself.
Now, it is true that manpower is what is blocking all of this (and money of
course), but we have to admit that this isn't the best organized solution
right now, a lot of people have already complained about this, about the lack
of "direct" contact with the creator, and even with the lack of possibilities
to help. Rúben must be really busy and I respect that, but I also agree with
Chris, we should create a document with all the necessary information to send
to Rúben so he could take a look and see what can be done by us for Trisquel
(since Trisquel is the reason we are (almost) all here.)
