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To Whom Should I Donate?

Posted by Soulskill on from the think-of-the-devs dept.

jasonmanley writes "I currently use DesktopBSD. The other day I gave some thought to donating money to the project, but then I got to thinking — to whom would I donate the money? DesktopBSD benefits from FreeBSD and KDE among other projects. What about software with a smaller focus, such as OpenSSH? In fact, there are heaps of other projects' software embedded in FOSS packages, and I would like to know who the community thinks should get the donations."

7 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Donations - Not what you think!!! by zukinux · · Score: 4, Informative

    The common thinking would be, why should I donate to a big project, they must have been getting billions already
    The truth is different guys, just from looking at the donations page at KDE.org I would have thought that that they get at-least 30K$ p/m, but the truth is different (300$, in a good month)
    We, the USERS, should donate more

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    !!!
  2. OpenSSL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Like it or not, your security depends on it, and it's chronically underfunded last I checked.

  3. Donate to FSFE - fighting swpat, DRM, etc. by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't forget the organisations that defend your right to write software, like FSFE.

    And you don't have to be European to like FSFE's work. As well as fighting against software patents at the European level, we have people working at the UN/WIPO/WSIS global level to prevent harm in future treaty (such as TRIPS, which was the basis for the EU proposal to allow software patents).

    And we do licence enforcement, campaigning for open standards, campaigning against the criminalisation of the grey areas of copyright law, and we supported SAMBA in their push to make the documentation published by Microsoft usable by free software developers. And more, but if I stop to think, then this post won't appear high enough to be seen :-)

    You can donate, or join the Fellowship.

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  4. Re:How many people benefit? by Klaus_1250 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Agree with parent. You could also set aside the money for a few months and see which project actually has issues with funding. If I remember correctly from about 2 years ago, OpenBSD (and OpenSSH) had serious issues with funding at that time: http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/06/03/21/1555243.shtml .

    Occasionally, a part-time dev may step forward and announce he/she is willing to work full time on the project for a period time, provided people are willing to financially support him/her. Those may be good times to sponsor as well.

    --
    It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
  5. Re:How many people benefit? by Krunch · · Score: 3, Informative

    > OpenSSH, you would actually be donating to OpenBSD who
    > run the OpenSSH project, but whatever.

    Actually, you can make a donation specifically to OpenSSH as said on the donation page.
    http://openssh.org/donations.html

    Of course most OpenSSH people are also OpenBSD people.

    --
    No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
  6. Re:Relevancy ? by bconway · · Score: 3, Informative

    Doesn't look like it. Though I'm sure you weren't "recalling" anything, anyway.

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    Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
  7. Re:Making things complicated. by the_B0fh · · Score: 3, Informative
    RedHat is a commercial enterprise, much like Microsoft. You buy from RedHat because you want commercial support. There is no non-profit segment to RedHat. They contribute to opensource because their business model requires it. If they don't make money, they will go away. However, the opensource software will still be around.

    For the OP, I would take a look at a couple of factors:
    1) which piece affects you the most?
    2) which project is the poorest?

    Personally, I prefer to donate to OpenBSD because
    1. they do not have much external resources
    2. they stand by and for their principles which result in much freer opensource:
      • look at the release of SUNW documentation for the sparc cpus - it's mostly OpenBSD's work
      • look at the reverse engineering of the atheros firmware
      • look at all the other work with vendors to release information, sometimes browbeating the vendors to keep their promises
      • look at all the security work they've performed, including creating 4 APIs that is now used by all, that reduces buffer overflow issues
      • look at all the work done in simplifying various software that are important, such as openntpd, openbgpd



    Mind you, I think donating to KDE is good too.