Which FOSS projects have enough funding that we should donate elsewhere?
Which FOSS projects have enough funding that we should donate elsewhere?
There were some posts over the holiday season asking for projects to donate to, and for those who have the means to comfortably do so, this is an important gift to consider.
If there's only a limited amount each of us is able to give, I assume there's no point giving it all to, for one example, The Linux Foundation, because a small personal donation is trivial next to the ~$15,000,000 USD they receive from sponsors dependent on them[1]. I understand that funding sources can be a major and profound source of bias[2] and ideally we would be, for example, helping to make Firefox independent of Google, but until we have more collective power, it's not worth letting smaller important projects struggle instead.
So, which important projects should we leave to the sponsors, and which really need our support?
Jellyfin has explicitly asked that people find other places to donate to: https://opencollective.com/jellyfin/updates/were-good-seriously
I do see a mention in that post about instead supporting the jellyfin client developers. They give this page as a reference for who to support based on which client you use.
Thanks for sharing this.
same with antennapod
Reading the first lines I was gonna say just cause their operating costs are covered doesn't mean they should refuse more donations, because they could use the money to hire people to fix their garbage software.
But they cleared that up further down where they suggest donating to Jellyfin clients instead, which are indeed the biggest problem at the moment.
Hopefully it will one day become a viable Plex alternative for people that are sharing their server with "normie" users, and not just users that are technologically inclined and willing to use external Android TV boxes instead of hoping their SmartTV has a Jellyfin client available for it that isn't hot garbage
AntennaPod states this on their website
AntennaPod doesn’t need a lot of money. Our (annual) costs are already covered by our existing donation funds. Therefore, we’d much prefer it if you
- donate to your favorite podcast(er), or
- help us with a non-monetary contribution.
Wikipedia could learn from their decency
Wikipedia is amazing, and I have donated to them a number of times. But something just rubs me the wrong way about their current donation drive and anything I read about how much their higher ups are getting paid makes no sense to me. Why are the salaries so high? Where is the clear breakdown of server cost and infrastructure?
I donate to Wikipedia monthly because this is such an important website, but their donation drive is making my blood boil each time.
Maybe I can say Wikipedia because if it’s mediawiki software. Every year they ask for money but a lot of their funds don’t go towards the Wikipedia project.
Their only defence is to support other mediawiki projects, but it is ambiguous we don't know how the money goes. The project, whatever that is, should speak for itself instead of going through Wikipedia.
I'd recommend you donate money to those who host open infrastructure. That stuff is expensive and critical to the free and open internet.
As for free software projects I suggest donating your time with contributions. That's what they need the most. Helping with bug reports and writing documentation are easy starters and worth much more than money. That's hard to sell as a gift though.. One gift card for confirming and investigating a bug in free software of choice. Merry Christmas Uncle Bob!
Going from being a cool hacker who does things for fun and share it with his peers to being a poor cyberbeggar does no good to a persons selfworth. Help out by contributing and let Mr. Cool Hacker have time for his day job on the side. We get better software and fewer burnouts.
I'm glad you mentioned the open infrastructure projects. For example, I use some of the few remaining nitter/invidious/etc. servers.
As for free software projects I suggest donating your time with contributions.
Definitely. I'm already spending much of my spare time doing this.
Yes! Writing software has no barrier to entry besides skills. Hosting something costs.
Why do people ask questions like this? Isn't, "Which worthwhile FOSS projects are underfunded?" a better way to say it?
It's just so kludgy.
Matrix, Deltachat, Nextcloud more then enough, they can not more even with money
Matrix? Are we going by volume or need? Cause i'm pretty sure they could use more funding.
Don't get me wrong using the Matrix, etc. But! They constantly complain: there is no money, no money, money appears, problems are not solved as before. A simple infusion of money will not solve anything... Money for what?! There are a lot of similar projects that are conceived and managed by one person, only one, without an army of programmers, managers, managers, etc.
Wikimedia, and wikipedia, also firefox
firefox I guess actually has enough funding
leverage inc should, make it happen...
Mozilla is losing the vast majority of its funding soon with the Google antitrust situation
pip-requirements-parser
strictyaml
pip-tools
These are all abandoned important Python packages
Is funding for a maintainer even an option?
The NetBSD Foundation can use some funding from Community.
You know hyo cares about whatevever inc? no-one, so yep