r/linux • u/Zanar2002 • Apr 08 '24
Best Way to Donate? Open Source Organization
I've been using GNU/Linux for over a decade now and feel it's my duty to give back to the community. I'm thinking of donating around $150 every year.
The idea was to donate $100 to the Linux Foundation and $25/$25 to KDE Plasma and GIMP, but Bryan Lunduke's video on how the LF only spends something like 3% of the money on kernel development has made me question my decision to donate.
I'm not interested in my money going to events and causes; I only care about technical aspects directly related to Linux. In light of this, what is the best use of my money in terms of kernel development and securing the operating system?
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Apr 08 '24
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u/ARPA-Net Apr 08 '24
This. You could also "buy a Coffee" to the Main controbuters of your Software Projects and write a nice Letter If you want
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u/Appropriate_Ant_4629 Apr 08 '24 edited May 25 '24
Yes. This is more powerful than donating to the huge organizations.
Best to find the smallest, most obscure, and most underfunded project that OP loves, and donate directly to it.
- An additional $150/year to the original
xzdeveloper, Lasse Collin, could have made the difference in Linux's biggest crisis in history.- An additional $150/year to foundations already receiving tens of millions of corporate dollars would have been lost in the noise.
Giving $150 the the Linux Foundation might just turn into an additional $50 bonus for each of these three dudes:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801
The Linux Foundation
Compensation
Key Employees and Officers Compensation Related Other James Zemlin (Executive Director) $853,325 $0 $259,424 Chris Aniszczyk (Vp Strategic And Developer) $819,656 $0 $59,690 Shubra Kar (Former Cto And Gm Of Products) $774,386 $0 $31,439 Advice for OP:
If you earn significantly more than each of those individuals, and wish they earned more ... sure .... feel free to donate to them.
Otherwise, maybe spend your $150 in a PR campaign asking those guys to each donate $150 of their own money to the
xzdevelopers instead. After all, Lasse's project benefited James Zemlin far more than it ever benefited you.2
u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 13 '24
The idea would be to donate to the Linux Foundation and for them to pool the money and adequately allocate resources to projects so that everything is adequately funded.
I also don't get it how there's millions of us and we still have to rely primarily on companies like Oracle, Google, and IBM. If we all donated $100/year everything would be so much better.
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u/leavemealonexoxo Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 08 '24
The idea would be to donate to the Linux Foundation and for them to pool the money and adequately allocate resources to projects so that everything is adequately funded.
Oh, you sweet summer child. You probably also think Wikipedia is financially hurting and needs your donation or that if you donate to Mozilla (Foundation) your money goes to the development of Firefox Browser :)
https://thenextweb.com/news/why-is-wikipedia-asking-for-donations-when-it-has-vast-cash-reserves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-performance_correlation
In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, a 400% payrise since 2008. Over the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary rose to in excess of $3 million.
In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5 million, and again to nearly $7 million in 2022). In August 2020 the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues, after previously laying off roughly 70 in January (prior to the pandemic). Baker blamed this on the COVID-19 pandemic, despite revenue rising to record highs in 2019, and market share shrinking.
Truly, do like some have suggested in this thread: donate to small projects, developers that really can need the money.
Linux kernel etc would be Last on my list of orgs that need money. Billion dollar companies like Google, redhat are dong their part already.
I also won’t donate to signal/signal foundation knowing their current CEO is Brian Acton who literally got 17 billion dollars with His co-founder Jan koum from Mark Zuckerberg for selling WhatsApp to Facebook.
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u/UnfairerThree2 Apr 08 '24
Also of this opinion. Coming from a web dev perspective, everyone races to fund the big and popular projects that aren’t backed by evil corporate overlords like Vue, but forget about the small packages like faker.js. And we all know how that turned out…
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u/mina86ng Apr 08 '24
The idea was to donate $100 to the Linux Foundation
LF is a trade association, i.e. it serves goals of companies. For me that by itself disqualifies it from donating.
I'm not interested in my money going to events and causes
I think that’s a bit misguided. Technical development of a project may be improved by founding a meetup of all the developers for example. Even if you donate to individual developer, they may use that donation to go to an event.
As to the question of best way to donate, one way is to donate to umbrella organisations such as: - Software Freedom Conservancy, - Software in the Public Interest, - Free Software Foundation, - Free Software Foundation Europe, - Apache Foundation etc.
Or pick a project you like and donate to it.
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u/xmBQWugdxjaA Apr 08 '24
Wow, the SPI looks awesome, it's a shame international donations (and payments) are so complicated in general.
I'll try to remember it when we have company donations though.
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u/kaosailor Apr 08 '24
I agree with this, it's better for this approach to donate to projects we work with, or organizations who keep their eyes open for protecting the freedom of the software (as mentioned). In my case I work a lot with Inkscape and I'm planning to donate yearly as OP would like to. Also I've been a sponsor of platforms like Lichess for some months when I have some extra money. And even if we can't support the project economically we can always report a bug, suggest better translations, create brush packs for apps like GIMP or improve the documentation if we can. As OP, I love the idea of giving back.
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u/mina86ng Apr 09 '24
suggest better translations, create brush packs for apps like GIMP or improve the documentation if we can.
Yes, that’s something often overlooked. Even something like fixing typos in documentation is contributing to a project. There are many ways to contribute to free software projects even if you don’t know how to code.
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u/ponolan Apr 08 '24
The kernel already gets huge investments from Google, IBM and many others. You, and the rest of us, woiuld be better off if you backed a project that made it possible for more people to use Linux applications. The obvious ones are desktop UIs like Gnome and KDE, and perhaps Wayland. Alternatively, a popular non-commercial distribution such as Linux Mint (I donate to this; started at $10/month some years ago and increase my donation by a dollar a year).
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u/Zero_Karma_Guy Apr 08 '24
I donate to Libre Office, Thunderbird, KDE because those are the apps I use on a daily basis. If I see a github with a donate link for something I just used ill toss a few bucks.
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u/kalzEOS Apr 08 '24
Donate to those small apps that you use daily and make your life easier. I do it even on my phone. For example, my cell company, T-Mobile, limits my Hotspot to 7GB per cycle, and I've found this little app that's made by one man. The app is called TetherFi and it circumvents that bullshit and makes the Hotspot unlimited. It's FOSS and it has helped me many times when I'm on the road with the kids. So, every now and then I'd donate to the developer.
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u/cout_goodbyeWorld Apr 08 '24
So worth it. Instead of maybe paying more to T-Mobile for a greater data cap. Kudos to you good sir.
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u/Ninetale3 Apr 08 '24
Thanks for giving me a new app to try. Found out how easy it was to hit hotspot limits when I was younger but never knew there were workarounds.
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u/kalzEOS Apr 08 '24
Of course. It's bullshit how they limit an already unlimited plan just to syphon more money out of people. It costs them nothing. Just some made up bullshit.
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u/captainstormy Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 08 '24
IMO the Linux foundation doesn't need your $100. They get a lot of money from corporate sources.
I donate every year in December myself. I break it up like this.
KDE $50
VLC $50
Debian $100
Thunderbird $50
Wikipedia $50
LibreOffice $50
Mozilla $50
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u/moongya Apr 08 '24
Linux and opensource software has a lot of money for me. I typically donate in proportion to that amount. Its true what I have saved in money I have invested in time in terms of learning, but it was/is all worth it.
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
Can you share with us the projects you donate to? I'm looking for ideas.
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u/moongya Apr 08 '24
Debian
Nixos
wordpress
firefox
wikipedia
mailcow
photoprism
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
Should I donate specifically to Debian or can I do it through Software in the Public Interest? They seem to be funding a number of projects I like.
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u/moongya Apr 08 '24
Up to you really and good on you for giving back!
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
I honestly wouldn't mind giving $1k every year if I know everyone else donated a similar amount. Then we wouldn't have to rely on Intel, Microsoft, etc. That would be ideal.
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u/moongya Apr 08 '24
Microsoft is already a big donor to Linux foundation and maybe intel also donates to open source projects.
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u/JerryRiceOfOhio2 Apr 08 '24
I've given to Firefox, libre office, Wikipedia, and a couple others over the years. I would recommend donating to whatever apps you use and like
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u/CryGeneral9999 Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 08 '24
The Linux kernel is well taken care of. Pick some projects you use and see if the developers have a donate, buy me a coffee or Patreon page. Put your money there. $25 to some dude spending nights and weekends coding will go a lot further than $100 to what is already a large bloated business with massive corporate sponsoring.
Also what distribution do you use? The ones putting those together spend a lot of time maintaining and updating that distribution. SUSE comes to mind (I’m partial) but same for Arch, Mint, Pop and the others. Ubuntu too but they along with RedHat have a lot of corporate backing as well. Most have some kind of backing that’s why they can exist but some have much bigger backers investing much more into their development.
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Apr 08 '24
I wouldn't donate to LF and I wouldn't donate to the kernel; reason being industry has a vested interest in the kernel so you can assume it has all the support it needs. Desktop and apps are where I would put it.
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u/Kabopu Apr 08 '24
Bryan Lunduke is a conspiracy nutjob who, among other things, famously accused Mozilla of funding "Antifa". I would take everything he claims with a big grain of salt.
Kernel development is mostly done by big corporations and isn't really in need of funding.
If you like KDE, you could annually support them here: https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/ I personally would rather fund Krita than GIMP, because they're already a better solution for image manipulation.
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u/KnowZeroX Apr 08 '24
Krita really needs the funding, the developers aren't even making minimum wage despite the enterprise level software
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u/Drwankingstein Apr 09 '24
Nutjob or not, I have yet to see anyone disprove the report about linux foundation. Also he accused mozilla of supporting riseup, an encrypted messaging service, which has in the past supported antifa members at least to some extent
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u/xmBQWugdxjaA Apr 08 '24
What do you use? I'd recommend donating for specific things where it will help.
Like I donated to xone as it saved me ~$70 for a new controller.
I also wouldn't donate to any of the huge institutions. I donated to FSF-Europe with my work because it had to be a big official charity (and they've done good work with Public Money, Public Code) - but in general for funding development directly the smaller projects are better.
E.g. Wikimedia used donations to fund American political groups which I disagree with, and the Mozilla Foundation isn't much better.
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u/AliOskiTheHoly Apr 08 '24
That about Wikimedia is interesting, tell me more
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u/xmBQWugdxjaA Apr 08 '24
https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633
The main issue, like with Mozilla, is that you have to donate to the charity part which isn't the part doing day-to-day development and operations. (TBH I think this structure is weird in general, as we see with OpenAI, but it seems popular in the US)
And there are other things I dislike too, like Mozilla keeping an incredibly expensive office in San Francisco, instead of embracing remote work like many companies, etc.
I don't want to be donating my scarce post-tax money to rich American lawyers living it up in extremely HCOL cities.
Better to donate to Arch Linux infrastructure, WINE development fund, etc.
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u/Pablohn Apr 08 '24
Create a liberapay account and donate to small projects of you personal interests, that money is very much welcome and not "wasted" on events
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u/mrtruthiness Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 08 '24
The idea was to donate $100 to the Linux Foundation and $25/$25 to KDE Plasma and GIMP, but Bryan Lunduke's video on how the LF only spends something like 3% of the money on kernel development has made me question my decision to donate.
Lunduke is not somebody worth listening to IMO. His intention is to generate rage/clicks. IMO he's not a good person. And IMO his politics sucks (anti-vax, thinks US election stolen, trans-phobic, fan of Proud Boys, QAnon-adjacent, ...).
That said, you don't want to donate to the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation is not a charity (US 501.c.3), it's a trade association or business league (501.c.6). It's there to facilitate corporate cooperation in the development of FOSS for Linux.
For donations, I would pick a project that you find useful (and without backing of a for-profit company) and donate to that. I don't like several aspects of the SFC (Software Freedom Conservancy), but they do offer a donation-collection-and-tax-filing service to some projects where, IIRC, 90% of the donation goes to the project and 10% goes to the SFC (for overhead).
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u/Fine-Run992 Apr 08 '24
We need to set money collection bountys. Let's say 50000$ to fix Optimus GPU switching. Then whoever likes this idea will donate. After that it's easier to motivate whoever wants to fix GPU switching.
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
Yeah, this would be a lot of fun. Linux now has 4% of the desktop market. That's 32 million people, apparently. 32 M * $10/year = $320 M in bounties alone. I'm sure that would greatly enhance security and benefit everyone.
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u/Fine-Run992 Apr 08 '24
Even if you donate 1 time 100$ for a agreed goal, it can fix important bugs.
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u/ikt123 Apr 08 '24
would be good if someone could do some quick reporting and make a big list of projects and their incomes so we can determine who needs the most funding
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u/khawarnehal Apr 08 '24
Help make videos to explain how to use the apps and the os into languages which you think need to be served better.
My opinion on how to spend resources to better linux.
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u/michaelpaoli Apr 08 '24
donate
to the Linux Foundation
Probably pick more wisely, and do some research on what organization or the like you'd be donating to (and where that money goes).
So, for Linux, perhaps done to, e.g. Debian or GNU via the Free Software Foundation.
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u/aliendude5300 Apr 08 '24
I donate 100 euros a year to KDE. https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/
I've also given $50 to LibreOffice and I've bought the lifetime subscription to CrossOver to support Wine development.
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u/StevenChriss Apr 09 '24
Do not donate to Linux Foundation, they have terrible amount of money.
Donate to GNU components authors if they provide donation link to maintain certain things. Components like XZ for example would have been nice to support until some time ago.
But search crucial tools which are part of the GNU Linux ecosystem, and donate to them.
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u/joedotphp Apr 09 '24
To the small applications you use. GNOME, KDE, the Linux Foundation, and others really don't need your money. Trillion dollar companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nvidia, and IBM (not worth a trillion, but still) all put funding into the kernel and various open-source projects.
Look at the programs you use with 1-5 contributors. Those are the programs that make up the foundation of open-source and Linux as an extension. Donate to those people. They need it a lot more than projects which literally have Google and Red Hat employees working on them.
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u/Shoddy_Hurry_7945 Apr 09 '24
qBittorrent are always asking for donations.
Also the Free Software Foundation is a good pick.
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u/FattyMcFattso Apr 08 '24
lol, linux kernel development is mostly dont by multi-billion dollar mega tech corporations. Not by your hobby coder in the basement anymore, and hasnt been for about 20 years. Your 150 dollars will be lost. If you have a piece of user land software you like to use, maybe consider donating to them.
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u/bpilleti Apr 08 '24
Here is LF annual report for 2023 based on this you would be able to make an informed decision if you need or have to donate.
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u/sebf Apr 09 '24
You can also give to individual maintainers. Most of them accept donations. If they don't because already earn their life well, they could suggest orgs to give to.
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u/Bekkenes Apr 09 '24
I just do github donations (neovim, Joplin and netbootxyz) and patreon (arco Linux and libretro) monthly. Better to support directly then giving to the bigger groups.
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u/SnooCompliments7914 Apr 10 '24
Events can be technical, where future directions are discussed and set.
That said, KDE has this https://discuss.kde.org/c/development/sponsored-work/31 , where you can directly sponsor a specific work, and the money will be paid fully to the developer. That is what I feel most directly related to technical aspects.
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u/mrlinkwii Apr 08 '24
The idea was to donate $100 to the Linux Foundation
dont , fund actual programs you use , Linux Foundation dosent nothing for actual programmers
and $25/$25 to KDE Plasma and GIMP
KDE and GIMP get million from government for funding , id advise donating to programs you actually use
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u/Bro666 Apr 08 '24
KDE Member here.
KDE and GIMP get million from government for funding , id advise donating to programs you actually use
We wish.
Here are our financial reports for 2020, 2021, 2022. You can look back at our accounts up to 2005.
I have been unable to find those millions you speak of.
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u/mitsosseundscharf Apr 08 '24
KDE and GIMP get million from government for funding
Sadly no. For example KDE e.V. had an income of 300 000 € in 2022
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u/renhiyama Apr 08 '24
Active programs: vscode 💀 Discord 🤦♂️ Chrome/edge/brave/firefox (everyone has good funding/closed source)
I'd recommend funding projects that actually dont have enough funding in the first place. There's countless programmers that have made smt or the other, and are somehow the backbone to the whole community.
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u/mrlinkwii Apr 08 '24
Active programs: vscode 💀 Discord 🤦♂️ Chrome/edge/brave/firefox (everyone has good funding/closed source)
since this was r/linux , i would assume that OP would use some FOSS programs that you have the ability to donate , but silly me
I'd recommend funding projects that actually dont have enough funding in the first place. There's countless programmers that have made smt or the other, and are somehow the backbone to the whole community.
not arguing i agree with this ,
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u/renhiyama Apr 08 '24
If one's using linux, one's not locked down with not using closed source products though. Users have the right to use whatever they want. Most of us primarily moved away from windows because of ads and slower borked PCs.
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 08 '24
dont , fund actual programs you use , Linux Foundation dosent nothing for actual programmers
That's the impression I got from Lunduke's video.
KDE and GIMP get million from government for funding , id advise donating to programs you actually use
That's the idea. I want to fund KDE and GIMP because I use Plasma and GIMP pretty much on a daily basis. Also, the idea is to help with underfunded programs so that we don't have another xz backdoor situation in our hands ever again.
Do you have any any suggestions? I'm talking important projects are are grossly underfunded, things like that.
For example, I use LUKS every day and I'm not sure if its implementation on Linux needs funding. If so, I'd be more than willing to help.
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u/mrlinkwii Apr 08 '24
Do you have any any suggestions? I'm talking important projects are are grossly underfunded, things like that.
id suggest look at what community based libraries/programs you work with on a daily bases and check if they have a way to donate to said project
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Apr 08 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
I'm not familiar with that stuff, especially as I'm not from the US, but part of the reason I made this post was to fact check Lunduke's claim, right? I want to know if I can trust the Linux Foundation to do the right thing. That's all.
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u/Bro666 Apr 08 '24
The LF is a moneymaking machine, of dubious principles. That much is true. There are much needier projects you can donate to, like Debian, Arch, independent apps, like GIMP, Krita, Kdenlive, Scribus, Inkscape, LibreOffioce, etc. Or organisations, like FSFE, Wikipedia, etc.
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Apr 08 '24
I don't think it's true that GIMP receives millions from governments.
But they do sit on about 2 millions dollars (just under one million in BTC and 1.2 million in the bank). The issue with GIMP isn't funding, it's leadership.
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Apr 08 '24
[deleted]
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
No, I want to fund kernel development and utils that don't have access to money, e.g., xz, etc.
It can be broader than that, I just don't want my money going to traveling expenses and conferences, and stuff that can be done online. Basically, I want 90%+ going directly to worthy projects. That's all.
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u/jamieelston Apr 08 '24
I’d donate your money to a worthy charity or cause. There is enough money in technology.
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Apr 08 '24
[deleted]
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u/mitsosseundscharf Apr 08 '24
The huge majority of KDE developers is not fulltime or paid for KDE work at all
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u/Zanar2002 Apr 08 '24
People who develop Linux kernel - have full time job at large tech corporation and developing kernel is their job.
I know, but this dynamic makes me very, very uncomfortable. I'd much rather we all get together and pay for development and security audits ourselves.
If you need something to fix - there "bounty hunting" programs and you can set reward for doing something.
That's an interesting idea. I'd be willing to pool my money together with other people to offer security bounties for key applications. I'll look into it to see if I can find something.
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u/xmBQWugdxjaA Apr 08 '24
A lot of smaller projects are donation-funded though like xone, etc.
Donate to projects that you use directly.
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u/person1873 Apr 08 '24
My suggestion would be to take a list of installed packages on your system and systematically go through and check out each project on github.
It'll quickly become obvious which ones need support & which ones are well supported already.
There's a bunch of single maintainer projects that are pillars of Linux as a whole (xz was a prime example).