If you feel like donating goods or money for the work the developers are doing, then we're happy to confirm that this is indeed possible. Of course we'd really like to have you working with us on the system, but if you're feeling generous we won't stop you either.

Note that you can't donate directly to the Hurd project, but only to either the Free Software Foundation or individually to the developers. Donations to the Free Software Foundation are tax deducible, see http://fsf.org/donate.

If you've got more money on hand than hacking time, you might consider buying some maintenance points (EUR 10 a point) to help the Hurd along. From the g10 Code site:

Hurd Maintenance Points are special: Some of our employees are well known Hurd hackers in their spare time; collected points for this program will be given to them in form of paid time.

See also this related mailing-list thread.

And for further motivation, some words of wisdom from Marcus Brinkmann:

By the way, if you are more on the speculating side, then it can't harm to just buy one or two maintenance points. That means that at some time I get an incentive to start the hacking, and there is a chance that when I start I don't stop for a while, and just continue on my private time (as I did for the last five years, if I might add that ;).

Another possibility is to meet with the Hurd developers at a meeting and spend them a pizza or beer or both or similar.

Developers

(alphabetically)

Marcus Brinkmann

... would like you to donate to the Free Software Foundation (see the top of this page) or to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Thomas Schwinge

Rate him and donate money to the Free Software Foundation through Affero.

For specifically donating to him go here.