Well I mean, I think I donate like $20 a month to Gnome, ... or is that KDE... Both? I'll have to look. But anyway yeah that's about all I can do is donate and try to be there to help where I can. I can also do documentation and proofreading.
I have a lot of qualms about a lot of stuff, but I feel like there is a lot of great payoff for GNOME to continue being able to maintain/improve stuff, especially as its my daily driver.
(I know this is anathema to a lot of people but I would gladly support something like Canonical having an OSS fund that it pushed patreon-style on its desktop OS, though to be honest I don't know what the admin costs for something like that would be)
I usually donate to FOSS projects I use since you can't pay for them in the traditional sense but I still want to support the developers. KDE is my favorite thus far.
The problem is that in practice most people in almost any free software project do not have the funds personally to afford donating all the time.
I mean, I feel the burn when I give money to Debian, Arch, KDE, etc - but I do it because I know I have to, because the software is so important to me. The $500 or so I donate each year is a lot of money to me, and I'm in the US - I cannot imagine how much donating to these projects would hurt the international users who make significantly less than the 15-25k or so I make annually.
I don't know how KDE managed it, but Blue Systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems) is a Germany company founded by one Clemens Tönnies, Jr. Don't know anything about the guy, but he is somehow paying 10+ KDE devs without a business model. I've donated a lot to Kubuntu, but I cannot imagine in a million years they get enough donor money to fund all the devs they employ.
But those kinds of philanthropies, the way Mark Shuttleworth keeps Canonical afloat, seems to me to be the only practical way to keep free software afloat. You cannot ask a million destitute people to donate money they need to eat or sleep comfortably, but we as a community don't have the charisma or ears to get fat cat donors to foot the bills. Probably because software freedom does not matter as much when you are wealthy - you can just pay to get the software you want made anyway, and you might even be able to bribe companies to give you the source if you care enough.
And I recognize a huge portion of the donor pool for most free software projects isn't either end of this spectrum, but people like me making something above the poverty line and below extravagance that donate what they can where they can, but that is consistently shown to not be enough. And I imagine it is more because it takes millions of average joes paying dollars to match what one millionaire can do in an instant.
That is the biggest problem with FOSS for desktop use, you cannot hide it behind paywalls or consulting gigs, which makes very hard to make a living out of it.
I always try to donate to the projects I use frequently, as if I just had bought a software package.
This is nothing but awesome (seriously) - but it still seems like a stopgap to the larger issue of supporting the people writing the software that we all depend on.
What's the best way that I can help this? A recurring donation to the Linux foundation?
To all crying wolf, saying this should have been donated to KDE or somewhere else, I suggest you go and set the example: Go and donate to some projects you use; Contribute patches; Incentive your employer to donate.
I'm not a Gnome user these days, but where I can, I donate to the projects I use.
This attitude from German government is great and sets a great example for us all.
That being said, you really want money to go to developers making the software. Not to discredit the work of packagers and integrators (mostly at Debian) but actually writing the code at the end of the day is the deal breaker.
For that you can donate to Gnome, KDE, specific projects like Krita, or Software in the Public Interest that funds a bunch of the non-umbrella projects like LibreOffice and Postgres.
I make a point of donating to open source if I create an issue or speak to maintainers, just a token amount of a few Euros - or more if I've used their code consistently.
I think FOSS has not sufficiently explored the donation model. I'd be keen to donate a decent amount of cash to get some fundamental improvements to Emacs, for example. Lots of developers are relatively well paid and use a lot of free tools.
Since I'm on Linux, I use a lot of software from people outside the big tech camp, such as the awesome kitty terminal.
There was a bug in it which unreported and when the developer fixed it in less than 24 hours, I signed up to give him 10 dollars per month. About 800 other people were already signed up and giving donations (possibly smaller).
People just like to give back, so make it easy to do and they will. But you need to make a product they use every day.
PSA to all Open Source maintainers: offer a version of your software for sale!
In many cases I work on projects that use an open source package where donations are the only means of support (if possible at all). I could never get a client to 'donate' €500 but I can easily approve €1000 for software support or licensing.
I've donated to half a dozen FOSS projects or organizations, and to a couple of individual FOSS developers. For two of those, I provide monthly donations, for more than the typical cost of a proprietary software license. I've paid for crowdfunding projects whose result got released as FOSS. I've also helped arrange corporate donations to FOSS projects.
Also you're an open source and free project? If you want donations we're going to need a cut of that. Doesn't matter that you're providing our OS with functionality (for free) that we can't or won't create on our own.
I have a list of FOSS project I rotate and donate to regularly, including Ubuntu and the FSF. Some many projects need help, VLC, libreoffice, firefox, python, ublock origin...
It's not just about the money, it's also a way for devs to feel that their work matters.
I'd pay $250 or $1000 for just using Arch month by month. Bear in mind I actually do, I donate $1200 plus to "Linux" or open source in general, per month, because I like it so much.
Haphazardly donating ~~ $1200 per month, and many times; more, but that's about it. It's a donate system I know this, put your money where your hearts is or are. Which could be anywhere. But that's my plan and in retrospects. Donate people, support whatever you want, whether it's Candy Crush for windows 8 or some other projects. I do. And have done. It's been going on for 14 years now. Donate people. Where you want to see either changes or stability.
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