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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."

4 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. To the Digital Standards Organization by pieterh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK, since I'm one of the founders, I'm biased. But free and open source software needs free and open standards and the Digital Standards Organization is the only international network set-up specifically to defend and promote free and open digital standards.

    Coincidentally, on the day we signed the Hague Declaration, Microsoft announced they would support ODF in Office.

    Luckily, Digistan does not want your money, just your support. Sign the Hague Declaration online, and help us by getting involved.

    --
    My blog
  2. Let the flamewars begin... by Kjella · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...since everyone will cheer for their pet project. Personally I'm inclined to go with KDE - they and QT are working to create a real development platform (phonon, solid, all the non-UI classes already in QT etc.) on Linux, not just a UI toolkit. Yes, I know GTK+ and family also have various non-UI things but none as polished that I've seen.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. The little guys by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Rather than donating to a project with corporate backing, why not split your donation up and give it to a few smaller projects instead? You're more likely to make a difference there. Even the tiniest donation could give a lone developer the extra enthusiasm needed to fix that one last bug before calling it a night.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  4. It won't work if we tell you by explodingspleen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are clearly a multitude of metrics by which you can assess the answer to your question.

    Humanitarian: language translation / disability assistance software / tor.
    Wanting to overthrow the evil empire: wine, firefox.
    Wanting better hardware support: kernel developers.
    Wanting to thank people: any projects you use/couldn't do without.

    Really, it works best to just donate according to your own special favoritism. This way the projects get money in proportion to how much people/need want them. If you just wanted to pick the one project that will contribute the most to humanity, well, I can tell you already it's going to involve feeding hungry children and not improving your boot time.

    If you like, you can imagine you are purchasing the software, and donate whatever is the highest price you would have been willing to pay for it (or at least use that to figure out the proportions in which you should divide your money).