Donating to open source
33 points by kqr
33 points by kqr
That’s when I realised I should not think of open source donations as charity; rather, I should make them from my fun money, the part of my budget I use to purchase cool gadgets
Yes! I just recently started toying around with AtomVM, and I am having so much fun with it that I decided I had to start sponsoring the project
This is also why I am not able to go through with such a rational decision-process on what kind of projects to donate to. I've donated to lots of open source, but it tends to be a spur-of-the-moment thing after getting my paycheck and noticing that some project I use is asking for donations. If I start thinking rationally, I end up giving to amnesty, red cross, doctors without borders or something.
Some projects I rely on are so small they don’t have a donation channel. Their maintainers work on them in their spare time and have no interest in changing that.
Anecdotally, I used to have BuyMeACoffee buttons on my spare time projects but removed them a couple of years ago because I hadn't received any donations since around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I guess that was when many people's fun money ran out more or less forever and I don't expect that to get better.
Figuring out who actually has a use for money is the hardest part, IME. It can be surprisingly hard.
oh, who isn't? (I am serious)
Who doesn't have a use for money you mean? 80%+ of open source projects are hobby projects done by people with high-paying full-time jobs that are not flexible and they have no interest in leaving. So sending them a donation will have zero impact on the project and minimal impact on their personal well-being.
Of the remainder, some projects are flush. Wikipedia being the famous example, but less famously for example Debian for quite awhile had more money than they could figure out what to do with given their policies and goals.
I want to make clear I’m not dunking on OP. They do much more than like 99% of all FLOSS users. However…
a small amount of my fun money
This is not a good framing. Tools is a good framing. I’m sure, you use a lot of FLOSS in your work. You pay for your computer, GitHub, CI, hosting, decompiler, password manager, whatever. You pay for tools you use in your work to earn more money. It’s very easy to convince yourself to pay for tools, especially, when you don’t have much choice. FLOSS is tools. You can use them for free but also you can pay for them. Even if at 1/4 market rate it’s gonna be a lot of money for FLOSS.
And again, if it works for OP, then good. If you too need to squeeze it somehow into your budget that doesn’t have a category for tool, fine. But tools is better. Spend money to earn more money.
Yeah, I see now how that is confusingly phrased. Generally, tools I buy for my private enjoyment also come from my fun money. I look at the FOSS donations exactly like I would equipment purchases for my hobbies. So we're in agreement, but the article doesn't make that clear enough. I'll try to work it in. Thanks!
yes, we have to be generous ourselves to experience generosity from our peers and that's what FLOSS is about, isn't it? Mutuality.