Over the last 6 months or so I’ve been trying to switch to (mostly) open source software. I’d like to somehow contribute to the software I use and the people making it, but I have no programming expertise or other skills that would be useful. Is there anywhere I can set up a monthly donation so I can at least help support the people who do have those skills?
There is no central location to donate to open source software in general. Most open source projects include donation details on their website or in their code repositories.
Yeah, just check out the website or GitHub of your favorite distro, desktop environment, or application, almost all of them will have donation options. I’ve given to EndeavourOS a couple times. Feels good.
That was my first thought, but I hoped there was some kind of foundation that supported multiple developers/projects to which I could set up a recurring donation.
There are a few such foundations!
- NLnet (among other things) donates to a lot of fediverse and similar projects, including multiple donations for lemmy.
- Software in the Public Interest acts as a fiscal host for its 45 member projects. You can make a general donation, or a donation to specific projects.
- The Software Freedom Conservancy, among other things, acts as a fiscal host for its projects. You can donate to individual projects, or make a general donation to conservancy and they will use it in whatever way best advances software freedom.
- Likewise, the FSF has a “Working together for free software fund” which has a few projects listed. I can’t see a way to donate to the fund as a whole, but if you don’t mind some (most?) of the money going to things that aren’t directly developing software, you could make a standard donation to the FSF.
Definitely going to look into them, thanks!
That is not a thing. But every donation platform out there that the various developers use has a “recurring donation” option that is almost what you are looking for.
I feel like I do nothing but plug liberapay these days, but it really is great and it’s how I do what you’re trying to do. Because of the processing fees payment networks charge, it’s usually more realistic to do yearly rather than monthly donations if the amount is small, but it’s otherwise exactly what it sounds like you want
This is a great place to start, thanks!
I think you are looking for something like https://liberapay.com/
Edit: just saw it’s already mentioned. Kudos to the other (better) comment
Your comment is good too.
Is there anywhere I can set up a monthly donation so I can at least help support the people who do have those skills?
Yes, many places. They are usually listed under the “donate” section of what ever project you want to support.
Look at something you use daily, Go to their github and donate there. Preferably to a project that needs more funding.
I asked this same question not long ago!
Find small projects you like and donate. Their dev sites usually have a donate option.
It’s not the ideal solution, but a lot of foss is hosted on GitHub and uses GitHub sponsorships. I would start by looking at the repositories for the projects you use the most and seeing if there is a button or link on it.
IMHO it is better to use a low fee crypto option if it’s available. That way the project can get almost the total amount of your donation.
