I've given a lot more money to the Krita Foundation than any other graphics applications combined. Every time there's an update I'm like "woaaah awesome taek mi monies!!"
Buying software for 10 bucks isn't even bad. Buying a license, which can be revoked at any time, is.
I have about €10 in Proprietary software purchases, and €1500 in donations to FOSS projects.
Would you accept sloppy mouth kisses from a basset hound in the form of thanks? Because though I am not affiliated with any foss project, I am affiliated with some charitable corporations and this makes my soul happy. And my neighbor's basset hound is really cute.
Yes I will accept kisses.
This is the way
I remember buying a CD set of FreeBSD 3.3 back in the day. Partially to support the project, and partially because the alternative was to download it over 33.6baud where I paid per minute.
in the early 00s my Dad and I bought a copy of Linux Mandrake from a Software ETC. didn't have much of a choice in the matter as unless you were in university or something that was the only way of getting it.
Man did we fuck up the family PC trying to install that thing. Came with a massive manual and my Dad figured he could do it cause he kinda sorta not really knew DOS. me? I knew how to put ram and a cpu in a computer. we were not prepared.
Unless you were in BFE, there were options for getting Linux delivered in the mid 90s.
I know I bought a Red hat 4 (not to be confused with RHEL) CD in the late 90s from some mail order thing.
This was actually "fill out a form and mail it". And they offered legit nearly every major distro. I think they even sold printed out copies of HOWTOs.
But it was quite cheap. Iirc it wasn't much more than postage and a small fee to cover time and materials.
And I paid C.O.D.
This wasn't a secret...I think I found the site either from usenet or EFnet #linux... but it wasn't like going to CompUSA.
I also remember seeing Walnut Creek FreeBSD and Slackware CDs at a nearby flea market (Flea@MIT) around then, too. Probably also the computer fairs as well.
What if i buy the OSS software on a Proprietary site like Steam?
Straight into the gutter
Why would you?
support both the website and the OSS software?
Does steam that is a monopolist when it comes to gaming stores even need your support?
Hey, random question here. Is there a project or a website where you can specify your Foss projects which you want to give money to and how much and you only have one payment? In my head I think it would be cool if I could split 50 euros in percent or something like this and target my favorite 20 projects. Obviously this project or website should and must be secure and trustworthy.
I think thanks.dev can do this, it's more designed around donating to dependencies of your own projects, but you can manually specify other projects.
I try and donate where I can, but stuff like Signal, that refuses to employ engineers outside of the US because "talent doesn't exist anywhere else" is where I draw the line. Yes, opensource donations are amazing, but not for projects with attitudes like that.
Is that really the case? I work for a multi national FLOSS organisation but every additional country you want to hire from requires additional compliance overhead so in practice we generally hire from countries where we already have the legal setup to employee people.
How big an org is Signal?
I'd have to find their blog post again where they reveal their financials. IIRC it was 50 staff and each was earning half a million or something on average. Maybe I read or remember it wrong but the blog post or comments by Signal staff (maybe even the CEO?) were quite elitist regarding their reasons for hiring US staff or staff living in the US only.
What the true reasons are I dont know. Maybe indeed multinational hiring is just too complicated, who knows, but the way the responses were worded were maybe unfortunate, but at revealing for me.
No-one deserves your donations, but that sounds like you're letting perfect get in the way of good. There are tons of things that speak for Signal. They made the whisper protocol and they consistently protect privacy where they can. I've used it for years (meaning I've actively generated costs for them without any revenue), and that qualifies as good for me.
I mean, I proudly wired 100 euros to GrapheneOS simply because how awesome it is.
Template for those that want it.
Thanks!
Where do the active code contributors to FOSS software exist on this scale?
donate 10 dollars, then deal with 5 years of constant email harassment for more money, despite saying they wont harass you for more money cough wikipedia cough
Wikipedia is proprietary not FOSS.
Sorry what? Wikipedia is running MediaWiki, which is fully open source.
wait what
Insert the super fancy Tux for donating more for the FOSS than you would have paid for the proprietary software 🤴
And the mind explosion Tux for donating to a project you don't (yet? or ever?) use but want to see developed anyway.
Made my first round of donations to FOSS projects last weekend!
Support the people doing the work that benefits you.
"buy me a coffee / lunch / beer" 1000% Everytime.
I donate to Codeberg and do kofi to linux content creators (many of whom have been a life saver) and whatever random neat FOSS CLI or TUI I come across. I also donate to dnkl who is the dev of Foot and Fuzzel.
If it's something I like and I use daily then I donate.
I've given more to FOSS projects in the last year since ditching with does than I gave Microsoft in the 20 before it.
I donate to the most important projects out there: Servo, PostmarketOS, F-Droid, Signal (from time to time).
Wikipedia? It's not software but worth donating to.
there's also the Internet Archive if one's looking for something to donate to :)
SO important. They're always under some kind of attack, and they're pretty much the most accessible way we have to access a web that keeps disappearing and getting replaced.
I donated couple of times. Aren't they doing really well financially? If they will put the big banner asking for money again I will give again :)
I'm also subscribing local newspaper even though the amount of trackers they have is ridiculous and The Guardian. Good journalism is also very important.
Wikipedia itself is doing fine but they have a bunch of super interesting side projects that they don't advertise much, and aren't doing as well. Wikinews, their news site is shutting down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Single/2026-03-31#News_and_notes (this is really close to april fools hopefully I didn't eat the onion. Or hopefully I did?).
My favorite is wikibooks: http://wikibooks.org/ , which are open source texbooks that can be edited wikipedia style. Their programming one's are really high quality. The idea behind those is that you can export a known good frozen version of them, as a texbook for a class. Related is also wikiversity, which is course curriculum. It's similar, but different.
But they also have a travel voyage, wikivoyage, and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_sister_projects
What's "Servo"? Searching all I find are, well, servos lol
New, open source rendering engine. It's our best chance at getting multiplatform, web based apps that don't depend on Apple or Microsoft. Hopefully also new web browser that can be an alternative to Firefox.
Alright that sounds cool!
Buying ~~$10~~ $1000 Proprietary Software
~~Donating $10 to FOSS Software~~ Subscribing to the FOSS Software Patron Tier for $10/mo
Hint: :q!
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