Weekend poll: do you donate or contribute to free/open source iniatives?

Inspired by @bliss comment at https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/113155#Comment_113155, I’m curious to know if any of you donate or contribute to free/open source initiatives and if so, how often.

I’m talking about both software/apps and web sites/services. Let me know in the comments what you donate or contribute to.

Do you contribute to free and open source software and services?
  1. Do you contribute and if so, if that way(s) how often?53 votes
    1. I do not contribute
      13.21%
    2. I contribute financially occasionally
      16.98%
    3. I contribute financially on a regular basis
        7.55%
    4. I contribute my time occasionally
      22.64%
    5. I contribute my time regularly
        9.43%
    6. I contribute both my time and money occasionally
      20.75%
    7. I contribute both my time and moment regularly
        9.43%
Thanked by (1)Ganonk

Comments

  • Most of the time I contribute my time to it if I'm regularly using the product and ofc if it's in a e.g. programming language I know. If I don't have the skills or time to contribute I'm donating from time to time though I mainly donate to smaller projects.

    Thanked by (1)Nekki
  • edited December 2022

    Mods, I think @Nekki's been hacked, can you please take a look? /s

    I file bug reports and write the fix if it's something within my ability; also PR-ing if upstream accepts, beats pestering maintainers with a "when will this be fixed" every weekend; I actually picked up Golang this way.

    Does paying for open-source SaaS instead of self-hosting count as donation? I'm probably donating to BitWarden.

    Thanked by (5)Nekki lgsin Murv someTom imok
  • Please forgive the spelling error in the last question, unfortunately you can’t edit polls. Clearly I meant ‘money’, not ‘moment’. I will blame autocorrect.

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • @jmgcaguicla said:
    Mods, I think @Nekki's been hacked, can you please take a look? /s

    I can post crap until the cows come home but there’s not enough ‘on topic’ chat for that yet, so I’m doing my but to contribute relevant content.

  • MicronodeMicronode Hosting Provider

    If we use an opensource tool within our products we usually either donate or attempt to contribute back. It really depends of the size of the community though, I’m less inclined to donate or contribute to an enormous community that simply doesn’t need our help.

    Thanked by (3)vyas Nekki AuroraZero
  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOGContent Writer

    I help very little. I suppose that helping a little, without causing harm, is a million times better than no help at all. But it's not much.

    Beta testing, and tutorials. That's what it boils down to.

    Also, it's not FOSS software, but I've pledged $5 per month via Patreon to a local independent radio station, and my next up (once I reach $50 per month in BikeGremlin donations) is LES (if @Mason sets up the account :P ).

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero

    Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member
    BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews

  • vyasvyas OGSenpai

    More or less annual contribution around this time of the year- lets call it hosting or SaaS money I do not spend (think: lunch money from school days) - that goes as contributions.

    Time spent both reviews/ promoting / bug reporting. Some day with documentation once business allows hiring an intern for just that task.

  • havochavoc OGContent Writer

    Not significantly. I did send some cash to lets encrypt once off though

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero
  • I contribute my time regularly to the Italian Ubuntu community, and occasionally to other projects ;)

    "How miserable life is in the abuses of power..."
    F. Battiato ---

  • I mainly just Open Source my own projects (for some time I had an app for sale in the Galaxy store for the Galaxy watch, but still also made it fully available as Open Source), but usually only contribute minor fixes to other projects.

    Some more significant contributions to existing Open Source projects in the past were to the Roundup issue tracker and the Open Watcom C++ compiler.

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero
  • _MS__MS_ OGSenpai

    I contribute my time occasionally

    Thanked by (3)Nekki AuroraZero imok
  • Contribute financially to a couple projects a year. Nothing huge.

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero
  • I contribute both my time and moment regularly
    I hope it should be money?

    Time: HestiaCP + Fossbilling and other "projects"
    Money: 1 euro / month to Sury sometimes money to other developers..

    Thanked by (3)Nekki _MS_ AuroraZero
  • @jmgcaguicla said:
    Mods, I think @Nekki's been hacked, can you please take a look? /s

    neutered and now hacked..must be hard /s

    Thanked by (1)Nekki

    Why?

  • NekkiNekki OG
    edited December 2022

    @jaapmarcus said:
    I contribute both my time and moment regularly
    I hope it should be money?

    Your query was addressed earlier: https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/113167#Comment_113167

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • @jmaxwell said:

    @jmgcaguicla said:
    Mods, I think @Nekki's been hacked, can you please take a look? /s

    neutered and now hacked..must be hard /s

    Looks like I’ll need a new account?

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • I really believe in preserving the health of the internet overall, a lot of the lowend infrastructure I get ends up assisting with digital preservation. Right now, I have 100+ VMs churning away at URLTeam, a project that crawls link shortening sites to find out what links they were shortening. This is super useful because if bit.ly or similar goes down, we'd lose everything shortened by their service. I also host linux mirrors, as well as some (hopefully speedy) ways to download OS images and the like.

  • edited December 2022

    I've donated both money and hardware to various projects, and I have also contributed a lot of time. I'm not much of a coder, but I've done some websites, testing, documentation, translations and similar.
    I'm also a recurring donor to LES.

    Thanked by (3)Nekki Mason AuroraZero
  • @Nekki said:

    @jmaxwell said:

    @jmgcaguicla said:
    Mods, I think @Nekki's been hacked, can you please take a look? /s

    neutered and now hacked..must be hard /s

    Looks like I’ll need a new account?

    Yes
    Nekknew

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero

    Why?

  • @jmaxwell said: Nekknew

    Newkki.

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero
  • @TheDP said:

    @jmaxwell said: Nekknew

    Newkki.

    I went on holiday there once. Lovely beach.

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • I donate every year to important open source projects and other worthy causes. I help in other ways where I can.

    I have a pop-up calendar reminder to make the regular donations. It is set to appear at the end of November. It just appeared recently, and one of the chores for this weekend will be to take care of our annual donations.

    -> I encourage others to share with their favorite open source projects. If you want to donate to a truly worthy cause that is not an open source project, consider the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

    https://www.eff.org

  • beaglebeagle OG
    edited December 2022

    I host mirrors for some open source projects. It's a nice way to put idlers to work.

    It's a shame there were no nice offers for small storage VPS this BF/CM. HostHatch 250GB $17/yr were perfect for that.

    Thanked by (2)Nekki AuroraZero
  • @beagle said:
    I host mirrors for some open source projects. It's a nice way to put idlers to work.

    It's a shame there were no nice offers for small storage VPS this BF/CM. HostHatch 250GB $17/yr were perfect for that.

    There are a couple of 250GB, and 500GB offers on https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/5004/saturday-morning-offers

    Thanked by (3)Nekki beagle AuroraZero
  • The push-ups streaming app is open source software.
    If I develop this software, I'm contributing to open source.
    Sounds legit?

    The router running on push-ups delivery network is also open source software.
    I designed the initial version, but now it's maintained by my classmates.
    If I do code review for this software, I'm contributing to open source.
    Sounds legit?

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • I've written a considerable amount of FOSS code. Some as a volunteer, but I got paid for some, so in that sense I've contributed a negative amount of money ;).

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • I'd like to contribute code, but I don't believe in myself enough to do so. (In theory I could do Swift/Obj-C, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Java, C/C++, Ruby and some other languages)

    Plus there is the time you need to understand the code base enough to sensibly be able to offer help.

    Thanked by (1)AuroraZero
  • I’m personally not technically proficient enough to be able contribute time as my very specific set of skills does not include development.

    I used to dedicate resources from my army of idlers but since they’re long gone I now contribute financially for things I use regularly and any project that feel is worthwhile.

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