Do you donate to FOSS projects?

CriticalMiss@lemmy.world to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 322 points –

Hello.

Although we pirate for various reasons (ideology, no money to spend on entertainment, etc.) I wanted to know if the community actually donates money to any FOSS project? Nearly all of us use a torrent client based on libtorrent (qBit, Transmission, Deluge) or an open source Usenet client such as SABnzbd to consume our pirated content, yet I wonder, how many people here donate to FOSS projects?

I donated 15 euro to KDE in the past, as well as 10 euro to qBittorrent to keep the projects alive. I think that software that respects it's users deserves to be rewarded for doing so. What is your opinion?

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No. But I should. Probably time to start.

You're kind of Robin Hood if you steal software and give the money to FOSS projects. 😄

No, but I'm disabled on a next to nothing/gifts from family budget. I sincerely appreciate those that can donate and share my work on git freely.

I donate hundreds of hours of my time every year maintaining several open source projects. Does that count?

Yes it counts and more than monetary contributions do

Agreed, do what you can but contributing if you have the skills and time for me is like being a superhero

Yes, I donate once a year to the projects I use most. I allocate about 200€ and split it up among those.

I had plans to do something similar this holiday season for the first time. Normally I just donate to my local jail bond fund.

Yep to the EFF, a few GNU projects, and previously to random developers I liked.

I donate 10€ to Arch Linux and NixOS monthly because they let me run all my stuff and occasionally to projects I like. Especially the ones that save me money that would go into media consumption etc.

I donate 10€ to (...) NixOS

So... you're essentially financing the next big ecosystem / vendor lock-in that will completely fuck and obliterate the fully open-source, free and not dependent on some-cloud-subscription-service operating system model we've going on today in Linux.

What the hell are you talking about? If you mean nixos' dependence on aws, there are alternatives to that like cachix and in the worst case, you could still setup some distributed caching network like ipfs or something torrent based. AWS was simply the easiest choice at the time.

I mean that NixOS and immutability trend is the next Docker/Kubernetes that will eventually lead to make people dependent on some cloud based repository or other similar solution controlled by a single entity.

Yes yes and yes! These people are a lifeline for people like me who can't code. People like me gain so much. Free is fun, but if you can donate, even one $, €, £ or other.

Have considered this but i have not yet started looking up anonymous ways to donate. Suggestions where i could start - eg how to anonymize credit card information online? If not anonymize, minimize personal info at least?

You can't really anonymously use a credit card. Privacy.com will let you give bogus info to the FOSS project if you really don't trust the devs having your name, but you'll have to give Privacy a bunch of info which is arguably an even bigger invasion of privacy. I suppose it's a matter of who you trust.

Most donations will go through an intermediary like PayPal so it's not like you're giving them your credit card info directly.

guess i can just use my credit card details. i trust the devs more than paypal. hahahahaha. i mean, they have done so much good already.

You could use the cryptocurrency Monero. It’s specifically made to be anonymous.

thanks for suggesting Monero, however i dont use cryptocurrency because we are still very cash dependent where im from.

You can buy monero online and then donate said monero to foss projects also online

How about bank account that generate cards for you ? Then you can destroy it online

thanks for this suggestion. like one-time-use cards? nice. this is new to me. i will ask my bank if they offer this service.

If you have Revolut or N26 you can generate a card only load it for amount you want and delete it after use.

FOSS s such a wide area of practice. There is no detriment in supporting a FOSS keyboard or image editor. Perhaps for these, or for software that might sails across the lines you might consider Monero, or similar.

i was thinking of donating to the projects i use a lot - inkscape and kdenlive. thanks for suggesting Monero, which was also suggested by another user. unfortunately, i dont have cryptocurrency. maybe i will just use cc for these donations.

I never used to donate to any FOSS project, now I donate every alternative month since I realized what I liked about the internet and tech is being taken away by greedy corporates.

Just as an aside, donating does not have to be monetary. Helping (if possible) with development, triaging issues or helping with support/forums of any kind, along with in general filing good issues goes miles for FOSS projects, especially larger ones with only a few developers.

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I donate to the OSM foundation as a basic member and 6€ monthly to organic maps. I spend a lot of time contributing to OSM as well. it's great to be able to see and use my own work.

For anyone that wants to contribut and have some fun, use StreetComplete on F-droid.

Yes, I'm also planning to join there soon. I'm imagining Google to make maps a subscription service in a few years.

Yes, you should support open source when possible if the project(s) you use are beneficial to you! Your dollars are far more valuable to help out a small team of independent volunteers vs multi-billion dollar corporations that really don't need it.

If you can't donate money, donate your time / skills or do both! Make the world of software a better place, one small contribution at a time!

I don't sail the seas too much, but I've been donating to FOSS projects ever since I left the church. This is my tithe.

Yes. To the uBO list maintainers and Jellyfin.

I dont have much money But i always love the message in Pirated Stuff "if you like it buy it!"

So one day i thought "come one at least pay 1 buck, because if everybody would pay at least 1 buck to a Project they like it would be an awesome Project!"

So i started with one Thing (i think gadgetbridge it was) and donated 1€ every year. So i did it to twelve Projects (1 for each month) and since i got my First Job, i pushed it up to 5€

So right now i Sonate 5€ a year to 12 Foss / other Projects i REALLY belive in and love (and use on a daily base) everything Else will be Still pirated (excwpr for winrar! I PAYD FOR WINRAR!!!)

It would be foolish not to pay for winrar. They are known for being extremely litigious of people who use the software once the license expires

My man, I can barely afford to pay to heat my sick, elderly parents living room (yes just that room, the rest of the house stays cold, can't afford it).

I'm not donating money to anyone at all and won't for the foreseeable future. When I do, it'll be to cancer research <3

But I believe FOSS is a noble cause and if I were wealthy I absolutely would.

You most probably won't need to donate to cancer research. It is already being funded in the hope that the medicines developed will bring in the dough once they are ready

Yes absolutely.

Pro tip: choose an appropriate annual budget, divide that amongst different projects in a logical way.

I currently do not have the ability to donate, but I will once I do.

::: spoiler CW: opinion I believe FOSS developers spending time to maintain something I (or others) use should be paid for that time, especially if it's their free time.

Possibly off-topic, but I think, even if you donate to them, you aren't automatically entitiled to a FOSS developer's time. It's your privilege to use something they made in their time for not you, and you have no right to demand them to change anything about it, so you should at least have the decency to be nice. :::

After I got a good job, I started donating to FOSS projects. They have already proven to be useful, unlike other crowdfunded projects in the inception stage. My bill for software now exists for opensource software, whereas when Windows was my main OS, it was non-existent. I love the option to give money. That's freedom.

Fuck closed source software.

Yes I do, and I maintain a couple FOSS projects as well.

edit: with that said, the FOSS projects I maintain do not accept donations.

I have a budget saved for donations that comes from overflow in other areas, when there is overflow. I spend it on the projects I use and like most.

A couple.

Lemmy included

I straight up pay for usenet and indexers though. Probably the same as a Netflix sub

Yeah, donate to kde every now and then.

Of course. I donate to the Lemmy developers, Wikipedia and a few others.

But donating is kinda hard sometimes because I would really like a system, where dependencies also get some.
Take Lemmy for example. It's built with rust and uses lots of crates (libraries). So why not give like 50% to Lemmy and the other half to the used crates. And those also split with their dependencies.

I've donated to VLC multiple times in the past and have a subscription for wikipedia

Personally, I'm still just a student, so I don't even have much money for myself. However, I've been compiling a list of projects to which I'd like to donate one day when I get a decent job. It includes many apps from FDroid, a couple of distros and a Japanese dictionary app that I absolutely love. I'd also like to create free-libre apps too, so I can give back to the community in the future.

I release code under GPL licences , I seed distros and have contributed financially in the past.

Yep, donated/bought to Cryptomator/Fair email/Dav5x... Mostly one-time contributions, though. Better than nothing, I guess.

Yep, monthly towards Mozilla and Wireguard.

Not a big anti Mozilla guy but have you seen their earnings? You could probably put the Mozilla donations to better use elsewhere imo

Mozilla needs to stay alive no matter what. If they go away there is only Google browsers left.

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I was going to but I forgot, until recently, so I made a donation to a project that is essential to my workflow, that being Qtile, a window manager and Wayland compositor that is just amazing, has an incredible built-in bar, and very low resource usage, especially on the Wayland backend, and it keeps on getting better and closer to perfect, so my donation was to support the further development of the project and to express my gratitude for its existence.

I did donate first to Mozilla but switched to Thunderbird because I think they're doing a better job. But now that I'm a stay at home dad for one year I stopped because I don't have any income and need to keep my money together while only living from savings until I'm back at work.

Thunderbird is a Mozilla project tho?

They are helping with collecting the funds and so on but when you donate to Thunderbird the money will be used for Thunderbird development.

I absolutely do, not necessarily on the pirating tools I use , though.

Sometimes

Usually I think of a one time donation as a purchase price for me or sometimes an annual subscription fee depending on how much I use it

Though the amount I put down ain't much, I still think it's a good idea

Yes, usually at the end of the year if there are funds to spare I'll donate to a bunch of FOSS projects, other non-profits, websites, etc. especially if I use them year-round.

I give $10/month to RiseUp for their VPN service.

Debian project once a year, I also donated to Mozilla and Libreoffice last year.

I’ve donated to KDE before and plan on doing again. I plan on increasing the frequency when I graduate and have a job.

No, but I plan to as soon as I can financially afford to.

There are countless Foss tools I'm using that deserve the money.

Currently I try to "contribute" by releasing my stuff into the open source space for free.

I'll soon have a salary and, as I mainly pirate music, I'd like to donate to SpotiFlyer and the artists I listen to the most. However, so far I haven't donated anything.

I've donated to the Mozilla Foundation, Wikipedia and Hibiscus/Jameica (banking software) in the past, but haven't in a decade or so.

I donate about what I figure I'd spend on proprietary products in a year, about $600-800. Mostly KDE and docker containers I use like piped, mailcow, nextcloud, as well as podcasts I listen to as long as they supply an ad-free feed.

I have a small monthly budget for donations in general. It's often niche stuff I love to use, and/or humanitarian aid

I'm broke

Not too broke to own a PC or smart phone to be here, so easy excuse imo. Small bits also help, it's the gesture that counts.

Don't shame others into donating please.

In order to participate in modern life you have to own a device which is able to connect to the internet. Also older devices get often gifted away to those who can less afford them.

I'm definitely not trying to shame anyone. Just saying it's the gesture that counts. Even donating 1, 2, 5 dollars makes a difference. It's a big thank you to all the devs who make all these awesome apps and tools for free. And in my opinion nobody is too broke to show their appreciation for these people, even if it's just a very small amount. It makes a hell of a difference to those devs.

Downvoted for making a point to support devs who built FOSS. I'm getting some "nice" Reddit vibes here.

How much do you think it costs to get a phone or PC?

I literally just got randomly given 3 cheap smartphones for free the other day. Even paying, you can get a OnePlus X for £40 on ebay.

Yes, also generally I donate different project every 6 months (instead of recurring payment to one project).

I've donated to Ardour for years and I pitched in at the last Kdenlive find raising. I'd like to chip in more once my budget has stabilized.

When Keybase did its Stellar giveaway back in the day I donated some Lumens to the Tor Project and another thing I don't remember.

Bought a Home Assistant dongle to support them and have a hopefully well supported piece of hardware. Sorely disappointed in it my my old 15 dollar dongle was better.

Yup, to Fediverse, this server, Calyx fondation and Signal

Calyx fonundation and Signal

Naaaa I'm not going to fund an Android ROM that has inherit and exploitable security vulnerabilities (read on hardware support requirements of the GrapheneOS project and you'll understand) nor a messaging App that was probably first funded by the NSA and we never know.

I would rather fund someone looking to make a single good cross-platform XMPP native client (iOS, Android, Windows and macOS) with push notifications that actually work and video - not the garbage we've today.

I would rather fund someone looking to make a single good cross-platform XMPP native client (iOS, Android, Windows and macOS) with push notifications that actually work and video - not the garbage we've today.

So are you? Because if you are just sitting around and waiting for someone out there to make a product by your own perfect standards, than its equal to doing nothing. Compared to doing nothing, supporting Calyx and/or Signal is infinitely better.

I used to be a mod on /r/StarTrek and everytime we did a fundraiser it was inevitably met with criticisms of some kind. I would usually respond with "That sounds like a great cause too, why don't you post the receipt (we encouraged users to share recepits) for that instead?" and never once saw it.

I donate to any project I use that takes xmr.

Yes, Syncthing, FreeFileSync, WinSCP, KeePassXC and others.

as well as 10 euro to qBittorrent

I would rather donate to Transmission.

I donated to Linux Mint once, I think it’s time to make another donation.

This time, I think I’ll donate to one of the emulator developers. I’ll have to take a look and see which platform is currently receiving updates pretty regularly. I’m learning towards ryujinx as that’s the main switch emulator I use. But I’m also considering pcsx2 as I really love that system.

Not directly per se. I donate to Wikipedia, EFF, and the ACLU. I guess Wikipedia is FOSS?

I have a recurrent donation to the development of Lemmy, set up on Liberapay.

Gentoo - three digits Matrix - used to patreon, but it's dead, so I stopped Wiki - occasionally

I really need to support Postgres and Patroni. Next year's goals

not every one but the ones i particularly find useful (i monthly donate to thunderbird and firefox) or through github sponsors

I donated to libre office recently and I want to start donating to Wikipedia yearly now that I am settled in my first job

I've donated in the past to elementaryOS, other Linux projects and separately to Wikipedia.

I've tried contributing code, but it's miniscule. I wish I could give more time.

this post has inspired me to look into it! i already was a part of proton's unlimited plan, but im def gonna start financially giving to other projects (and developers of said projects) that have been life changing for me, primarily linux mint and kde!

Yep - I have a list of a dozen or so that I donate to annually, so about one a month. Usually it's around 20 dollars (mine or theirs - depends on how they're setup to receive).

Count me in. I believe they shared their work out of passion and why not us end-user/power-user give back if these donations combined this can be beneficial to the developer's lives. Or contribute to the project itself.

Nope, but I think I've given enough to the community over the years.

Though I was thinking of donating to Void (maybe even some sort of a partnership, if they agree to it, which I seriously doubt) cuz I use it for business purposes as well.