If so, how do you choose which ones to donate to? Do you prefer regular or recurring donations? What payment methods do you like to use?
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Rarely, but I’ve contributed to a couple that I use.
Also, just a note that writing big reports is a valid contribution! It can really help both the regular maintainers finding and fixing bugs, but also gives new devs more potential work to pick up for first contributions.
No. I’m from Brazil and I really wanted to contribute to Brazilian developers, because my currency is nothing next to the euro or dollar, so I think: what’s the point? I can donate a considerable amount and that would be like 5€, I want to make a bigger impact.
I also really want to see some project or developer from my country grow, but I just can’t never find anything that came from here.
Donating even a very small amount sends a signal, and makes the developers feel valued. You spent time and effort to send a token amount, that is a strong emotional event.
I’m donating to a few projects and also to some fediverse admins, whose instance I use.
I really like liberapay as a platform, but there are other ways I use for donations, too. Recurring payment is preferred for projects that are important for me, but one time donations are fine too. I just constantly forget that I should probably donate again for projects that don’t have a way for Recurring donations and they’re probably missing out…
I haven’t cause I’m still a student and I don’t really have any income. But I’m trying to spread the word for them
I have a monthly budget that I pay recurring charges out of, a couple hundred USD a year give or take.
I also do a lot of one-off donations to various projects and creators.
I also have some FOSS software/services that I pay monthly for premium features on, like Bitwarden, Proton, and Podverse.
Yes, a few. Signal (daily use), LetsEncrypt & Certbot (EFF). It’s not enough.
One day I decided I’d spend $x every January (when I do all my other donations) on open source stuff I depend on, and roughly in the proportions I depend on them. It quickly became impossible - I can’t just fund Debian (which I use a lot of in VMs), I’d need to think of all their dependencies, same with NGINX, Node etc etc. The mind boggles.
I need something like a Spotify subscription for open source to assuage my guilt of the great value I extract for my personal use of open source.
I need something like a Spotify subscription for open source to assuage my guilt of the great value I extract for my personal use of open source.
I would love to see something like this, where I can contribute to an open source project while also contributing to all their dependencies. Maybe such a thing exists and I just haven’t heard of it yet.
I’m a programmer. I have created, maintained and contributed to many open source projects over 40 years. That’s my donation.
I never give money: I give my time - like for example I’m a volunteer at our local association for the blind - and I give non-commercial things like my blood, used clothing, used toys or food. And to repay the other developers whose work I enjoy everyday, I donate code that I strive to make as good as possible.
The reason I never give money is because the money - part or all - invariably ends up in someone’s pocket other than the intended recipient. When it’s legal, it’s called “overhead”. Still, legal or not, and justified or not, I’m not interested in paying for that.
Whilst I do understand that sentiment, with our project we have made as much effort as possible to make sure that nobody thinks we would ever do such a thing.
We are rather tight fisted with our donations and make sure we only spend them when absolutely necessary - none of it goes out as regular stipends for the team and all funds for expenses get sent in response to the actual bills incurred, I don’t think any of us would dream of siphoning it into our pockets.
We were even debating if we should use the “standard” funds to foot the bill for a new hosted service thing but felt this was a bit of a grey area - the service would be provided for free but footed by the donors of which only a small percentage would likely use it… We realise just how much of a privilege it is to be in receipt of the funds so we treat them with utmost reverence.
Not that I’m trying to encourage you to donate money to projects rather than time, I very much do the same as you and donate time and effort rather than money, but there are some good guys out there.
there are some good guys out there
I know that. But it’s just a general rule at this point: I just don’t give money. It’s rarely satisfying to give money (and yes, the person doing the donation needs to feel good doing it too) and I just don’t want to find out who deserves to get mine and who doesn’t. I understand your sentiment too, but that’s my personal rule. One has to draw the line somewhere: I’m not Mother Theresa and I reckon I contribute more than the average person to my local community. But I’m also free to donate what I want to donate, and money isn’t part of what I want to donate.
I’m a monthly donor to KDE EV and to the Mozilla Foundation.
I wish I could donate to many software projects I rely on regularly. Unfortunately I barely make a living now and being in a developing country makes donations hard to do with all the fees and regulations, as well as the difference in currency (1 dollar is 7-ish of our currency). I still feel guilty about not being able to do that. But maybe in the future I’ll be able assuage that guilt. I am learning how to code though and can already make some things. I’ll look into contributing code when I feel I can do that.
Well, I can’t help you with the fact that you don’t have a whole lot of money to begin with, but as far as the fees and regulations and currency issues, Monero would solve that.
Stay strong brother
I try to.
I brought every albums by Taylor Swift and am broke.
I’ve given one time donations to many. Mostly gaming and mistr related. I currently donate monthly to lemmy.
Yeah, I make a comfortable living doing software, and having kids didn’t work out. So I give out a few hundred bucks a year spread across the likes of Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, and some one off donations to smaller projects that end up saving me some time. Free software costs me more than proprietary software. Haha. (Well, unless I factor in the software I use for work… Then not even close O_o)
I get the impression that maybe the money sent to Mozilla might be a waste though. :-\
DivestOS developer who is maintainer for Mull and Fennec as well.
GrapheneOS and Piped
