MacHeist Raises $50,000 for Charity

by Glenn Wolsey • 12/14/2006 at 11:40 AM

Touting this week as “The Week of the Independent Mac Developer,” MacHeist began selling a software bundle of some of the hottest apps for OS X on Monday in the hopes of increasing the profile of the Mac shareware development community as well as raising $100,000 for charity before the holiday season.

The bundle retails for $49 USD and includes such best-of-class applications as media-cataloguer Delicious Library and RSS aggregator NewsFire. MacHeist is donating 25% of each sale to participating charities, which include The United Way International, Direct Relief International, AIDS Research Alliance, PreventCancer.org, The Nature Conservancy, The World Wildlife Fund, The Hunger Project, and Save the Children.

Originally, MacHeist announced that if $100,000 were raised before the end of the week, the award-winning text editor TextMate would be distributed to all customers. Today, however, MacHeist conceded that $100,000 may not be reachable in time. “Right now, it looks like the charity plateau may not be a realistic goal. So, we’ve decided that it benefits everyone involved here if we unlock TextMate now, and we’ll be donating anything extra necessary to guarantee a $100,000 donation from the Mac community,” said event co-founder Phill Ryu.

Therefore, MacHeist has decided to release licenses of TextMate to all customers. If customers are unable to drive donations past the $100,000 mark, MacHeist has pledged to make up the difference.

The sale ends at 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 17.