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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!!!)
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.
I currently do not have the ability to donate, but I will once I do.
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.
Hello open source dev here (though no very popular projects), even relatively small donations are morale boosts (e.g, $5, $10), which is kind of sad but yeah. If you can't do that, at least put effort into bug reports and use good manners.
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.
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 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.
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.
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'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 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.
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.
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.
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.