This is your reminder to set up a monthly donation for your favorite open-source software.

Posted by Dismal-Warthog670@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 42 comments

It doesn't really matter what. Could be the OS you're using right now, could be some application. If we all give a small donation to FreeCAD for example, they might turn into something like Blender today.

It doesn't have to be a lot too, but if you have some spare money, just do it!
It might feel useless but if you won't notice 10 dollars being, just give it to them. you'll make a real difference

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Anantha_datta@reddit

Honestly open-source survives on an absurd amount of unpaid labor people barely think about. A lot of us rely daily on tools built by exhausted maintainers fixing bugs at 1am for free while billion-dollar companies quietly depend on the same software.

Even small recurring donations matter because predictability helps projects way more than random one-time hype. Blender is honestly one of the best examples of what sustained community support can turn into. I’ve also noticed a lot of indie builders use open-source tools alongside stuff like Runable and Cursor to ship products way faster than would’ve been possible even a few years ago.

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sln1337@reddit

nah

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Dismal-Warthog670@reddit (OP)

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Flashy_Pollution_996@reddit

Aight aight gonna send a few bucks to kde and cachy

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aloobhujiyaay@reddit

consistent small donations matter more than giant one-time donations. Predictable monthly funding lets maintainers plan work

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Gargantuan_Cinema@reddit

I only have 10 dollars spare, should I donate it to starving children or open source software?

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

Just get something healthy or comfortable to eat. Shaming people into donating in the world where ~45% adults are unable to make savings is bullshit. This post is directed to the privileged who can.

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LRaccoon@reddit

Starving children have never provided you free firmware

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jefmes@reddit

If you have to choose, $5 to starving children, and $5 to open source if it's important to you, which might then help support a developer who works on software we use, who can then keep his children from starving.

I think people sometimes get too wrapped up on trying to solve all of these problems themselves - it's the collective donations of thousands of people that really start to make a difference. Every bit helps.

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AlphaWhiteMan@reddit

Open source software

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SirGlass@reddit

Its entirely up to you.

I do not only donate to FOSS , but it helps me do my job so I do donate some because the better FOSS gets the better I can do my job and in theory make more money

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reallydontknow@reddit

Love the momentum in CachyOS and KDE. Currently supporting CachyOS 30EUR per month (server tier) and KDE 100 EUR per year.

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Raevyxn@reddit

Submitting sailfishOS for mobile phones as an option. Would love to see it get huge and become competitive with android/iOS.

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CivilizationMaster@reddit

If I had money to donate the reason I wouldn’t would be that I don’t trust the developers of the software I use to make it better. I’m currently using gnome 3 and old gtk3 apps because I like the look of non-libadwaita gtk better. I’m glad I didn’t donate to gnome back in 2020, and then have them use my money to ruin gnome.

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Kevin_Kofler@reddit

Blender is a special case, it was bought from a proprietary software company with money raised by a crowdfunding.

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No_Insurance_6436@reddit

I did not know that. Interesting

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KudzuPlant@reddit

Trisquel, Ardour and Libre Office get my money. About $15 USD to each every year

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PlanetVisitor@reddit

I try to give € 5 a month each to some software and services that I use.

There is something I would really like, but have never seen anywhere yet. I would like to see how much money each person would need to pay, to use software, it everyone would donate the same amount.

So if there are 100'000 users and the product needs € 2'500'000 a year, you would be suggested to pay € 25 a year (more, less or nothing is always possible of course...)

Because now, the amount never feels "right" for me. Am I paying too much and could that money better go to other projects? Or am I giving them barely enough? Just no idea whatsoever.

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SirGlass@reddit

Give what you want

If you think another project is more deserving give to that project

The problem with "What could my $5 help" is the entire voting problem

Will a single vote change an outcome of some election , unless its a small local election no

Will 100,000s of thousands of people giving $5 change something , 100% yes

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PlanetVisitor@reddit

That is why I do donate, monthly. But how do I know how much they need? A larger company can give a service for a very low price because of the scale, in-house expertise, resource control and also because they do things like selling our data. A smaller company might be 5x or 20x the cost for a program that has less features and is more buggy.

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SirGlass@reddit

Who cares how much they needs?

Every bit helps, give what you can or feel is what you got value out of.

Don't over think it, you like a free OSS project XYX? Donate a bit to them.

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PlanetVisitor@reddit

I think they care how much they need, a lot :p Especially if they're working on it full-time. And I do. And since it's a transaction between me and them, yeah... hehe

But yeah maybe I should not think too much about it, I've been doing small automatic monthly donations to a few for years now.

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Dismal-Warthog670@reddit (OP)

You give the money that you think is worth it. if that product is worth 25 bucks to you it's worth 25 bucks.

But let me tell you, most projects don't have 2.5 million a year, not even close. You can really achieve a lot with 2.5 million

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PlanetVisitor@reddit

Yeah but that's why I asked - how do I know how much it is worth?

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jefmes@reddit

It's really a personal decision, how much is it worth to you? One way to look at it would be if you had to pay for it as a proprietary product from a closed company, what would you be willing to pay for the thing to meet your needs?

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FattyDrake@reddit

I just use what it would cost to use the commercial equivalent as a baseline.

Sometimes the FOSS version might not be able to do all that the commercial version can, so I might pay a little less. Sometimes I really use the app a lot and like the team, so I'll pay more. I give more to Krita each year than I would for a license for Clip Studio Paint, for example, but roughly the same to LibreOffice as I would for MS Office.

To me, the important part is that the software itself is open. There's been too many times I've paid for several versions of commercial software only to have it discontinued or changed to be worse to fulfill some data collection need, trying to be an asset store instead of a creative app, etc.

It's basically a hedge against enshitification. A FOSS app cannot be arbitrarily discontinued or hamstrung because it's not deemed profitable enough. The code will always be out there so I can continue to use it in some form. It really feels more like an investment or endorsement than a purchase.

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PlanetVisitor@reddit

What you outlined here, is exactly the reason I moved away from OneNote after building years of notes in there, realising I was stuck - there is not even a conversion programme that works well (there are some, but you lose the structure, or markup, or both, so might as well just export as HTML...)

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hotcornballer@reddit

Nah i'd let Andruil pay for it

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CptSpeedydash@reddit

If someone has extra money and use open-source software then they should consider donating but not everyone has money they can spare.

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Kaarle332@reddit

Yeah, I have monthly donation of 10€ to KDE

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jefmes@reddit

I have monthly recurring donation going to Signal, the CachyOS team, and my chosen Mastodon instance, Fosstodon.org. I love being able to contribute in a small way at least for these things I rely on - but it's doubley important for those of us in IT positions to make sure the companies we work for are ALSO donating to projects they rely on. I bet if 10% of Fortune 500 companies donated a tiny portion of the revenues they would have otherwise spent on proprietary software, we'd have a much healthier open source ecosystem.

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Artichoke808@reddit

I would add - best to donate where it will make a different..

Thunderbird was raising about $7M a year last time I looked. I use it and like it but I don't feel it's developing much given the funding, so another few quid will make no odds.

Firefox? They're making phone numbers so I don't think they need my money.

FreeCAD is a good shout, as is KDE Plasma.. both are showing a lot of development for the money they're receiving.

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NDCyber@reddit

Don't have the money to donate at the moment, but I use the server I have and where I don't need all the data to seed linux ISOs. I am on 269.95 GiB seeded at the moment

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djlorenz@reddit

I feel feecad need to be rewritten from scratch if it really wants to become usable, but I will donate to kicad again

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Dismal-Warthog670@reddit (OP)

It cetrainly needs a lot of work done, but I don't think it will need to be fully rewritten.

I love competition though! Donate to whatever you want

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SpeedDaemon1969@reddit

Nope. If you have new money coming in, you donate. Don't make others do it for you.

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codespace@reddit

What a weird take, lol.

OP isn't "making" anyone do anything, they're just reminding folks that it's nice to donate if you can.

Redditors get so weirdly hyperbolic sometimes, I swear.

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Dismal-Warthog670@reddit (OP)

Yeah I'm donating too. of course you don't have to, I think that's pretty obvious.

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SirGlass@reddit

I will donate

I don't like automatic donations just personal preference, however about 2x a year I donate $10/$20 to FOSS I like and use; hell I even donate to some I do not really use.

But I just sent $25 to KDE/Libre Office

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