this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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There were some posts over the holiday season asking for projects to donate to, and for those who have the means to comfortably do so, this is an important gift to consider.

If there's only a limited amount each of us is able to give, I assume there's no point giving it all to, for one example, The Linux Foundation, because a small personal donation is trivial next to the ~$15,000,000 USD they receive from sponsors dependent on them[1]. I understand that funding sources can be a major and profound source of bias[2] and ideally we would be, for example, helping to make Firefox independent of Google, but until we have more collective power, it's not worth letting smaller important projects struggle instead.

So, which important projects should we leave to the sponsors, and which really need our support?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'd recommend you donate money to those who host open infrastructure. That stuff is expensive and critical to the free and open internet.

As for free software projects I suggest donating your time with contributions. That's what they need the most. Helping with bug reports and writing documentation are easy starters and worth much more than money. That's hard to sell as a gift though.. One gift card for confirming and investigating a bug in free software of choice. Merry Christmas Uncle Bob!

Going from being a cool hacker who does things for fun and share it with his peers to being a poor cyberbeggar does no good to a persons selfworth. Help out by contributing and let Mr. Cool Hacker have time for his day job on the side. We get better software and fewer burnouts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

I'm glad you mentioned the open infrastructure projects. For example, I use some of the few remaining nitter/invidious/etc. servers.

As for free software projects I suggest donating your time with contributions.

Definitely. I'm already spending much of my spare time doing this.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Matrix, Deltachat, Nextcloud more then enough, they can not more even with money

[–] [email protected] 7 points 12 hours ago

Wikimedia, and wikipedia, also firefox

[–] [email protected] 39 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

AntennaPod states this on their website

AntennaPod doesn’t need a lot of money. Our (annual) costs are already covered by our existing donation funds. Therefore, we’d much prefer it if you

  • donate to your favorite podcast(er), or
  • help us with a non-monetary contribution.
[–] [email protected] 8 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Wikipedia could learn from their decency

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 minutes ago

I donate to Wikipedia monthly because this is such an important website, but their donation drive is making my blood boil each time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago

Wikipedia is amazing, and I have donated to them a number of times. But something just rubs me the wrong way about their current donation drive and anything I read about how much their higher ups are getting paid makes no sense to me. Why are the salaries so high? Where is the clear breakdown of server cost and infrastructure?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Why do people ask questions like this? Isn't, "Which worthwhile FOSS projects are underfunded?" a better way to say it?

It's just so kludgy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Because when they ask that, people say wikipedia or firefox and not things like archive

[–] [email protected] 21 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That's a different question.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

What makes it a different question, I’m ignorant and ask that you explain

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

"Which FOSS projects have enough funding that we should donate elsewhere?" is more-or-less asking "Which FOSS projects are overfunded?", making it almost the opposite of “Which worthwhile FOSS projects are underfunded?”

Plenty of projects I rely on are underfunded or adequately funded, and there are many thousands of underfunded projects. So I'll have no shortage of projects to consider. By instead asking for the overfunded projects, I can simply cross them off my list of projects to donate to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 35 minutes ago

Thank you, I understand

I think orbituary was trying to point out why do we not ask and give “notice” to underfunded project rather than those that already are funded and I feel both of you are trying to convey the same sentiment.

I could be dead wrong as well but thank you for bringing this to notice

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Not OP but I would say because it is a smaller list where if you want to donate and make a big difference to the project then you know it is good to give money to pretty much anyone other than the over funded ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 34 minutes ago

Appreciate you, thank you for the explanation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

firefox I guess actually has enough funding

leverage inc should, make it happen...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago

Mozilla is losing the vast majority of its funding soon with the Google antitrust situation

[–] [email protected] 26 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Maybe I can say Wikipedia because if it’s mediawiki software. Every year they ask for money but a lot of their funds don’t go towards the Wikipedia project.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Getting your ideas from Elon I see.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Did you even read what I said? Go look where their money goes, it’s mostly for random outreach programs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Donations+to+the+Wikimedia+Foundation%2Cour+ecosystem+of+Wikimedia+projects.

58% goes to fundraising, administrative and technological costs. The rest has some money going towards, but no limited to, other programs.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/Wikimedia_Foundation_2024_Audited_Financial_Statements.pdf

Only thing I can find in their financials that would maybe qualify as "random outreach" would be "awards and grants", at 26mil last year out of 185mil revenue, or 14%.

https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund

As far as I can tell, it's not particularly random.

Maybe I'm missing something?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

To me that still shows most doesn’t go where you think, especially when volunteers do the hard work.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Their only defence is to support other mediawiki projects, but it is ambiguous we don't know how the money goes. The project, whatever that is, should speak for itself instead of going through Wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 98 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

Jellyfin has explicitly asked that people find other places to donate to: https://opencollective.com/jellyfin/updates/were-good-seriously

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Reading the first lines I was gonna say just cause their operating costs are covered doesn't mean they should refuse more donations, because they could use the money to hire people to fix their garbage software.

But they cleared that up further down where they suggest donating to Jellyfin clients instead, which are indeed the biggest problem at the moment.

Hopefully it will one day become a viable Plex alternative for people that are sharing their server with "normie" users, and not just users that are technologically inclined and willing to use external Android TV boxes instead of hoping their SmartTV has a Jellyfin client available for it that isn't hot garbage

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Eh? TV boxes? Just use a web brower. What is a TV box?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Do you not have a TV? I've watched stuff on my monitor, sure, but sitting on the couch watching TV is what the vast majority of people do.

Unless you mean connecting your computer to your TV? I did this for awhile, there are ways to make it work, but I much prefer using a Chromecast or similar device to simplify the whole interaction.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

to simplify the whole interaction

and watch video in full HD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Well I think of the people who have 4K stuff (I don't), there's probably a lot of gamers who have 4K monitors by not TVs? Just guessing, IDK 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I'm not even talking 4k, literally just 1080p—most streaming services won't stream above 720p in a web browser.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Oh that's fair, yeah especially on Linux

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

same with antennapod

[–] [email protected] 28 points 21 hours ago

I do see a mention in that post about instead supporting the jellyfin client developers. They give this page as a reference for who to support based on which client you use.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 23 hours ago

Thanks for sharing this.