To Whom Should I Donate? 299
jasonmanley writes "I currently use DesktopBSD. The other day I gave some thought to donating money to the project, but then I got to thinking — to whom would I donate the money? DesktopBSD benefits from FreeBSD and KDE among other projects. What about software with a smaller focus, such as OpenSSH? In fact, there are heaps of other projects' software embedded in FOSS packages, and I would like to know who the community thinks should get the donations."
Re:Some options (Score:2, Informative)
I donate regularly to vim and groklaw.
The short answer is, donate to whoever you like.
Re:I would donate to the Perl Foundation (Score:3, Informative)
People saying "donate your time rather than your money" are very slightly offtopic, because the guy doesn't sound like he would rather support other projects financially than become a developer himself.
Donations - Not what you think!!! (Score:4, Informative)
The truth is different guys, just from looking at the donations page at KDE.org I would have thought that that they get at-least 30K$ p/m, but the truth is different (300$, in a good month)
We, the USERS, should donate more [kde.org]
I would donate to... (Score:2, Informative)
OpenSSL (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EFF? FSF? ORG? (Score:2, Informative)
Donate to FSFE - fighting swpat, DRM, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget the organisations that defend your right to write software, like FSFE [fsfeurope.org].
And you don't have to be European to like FSFE's work. As well as fighting against software patents at the European level, we have people working at the UN/WIPO/WSIS global level to prevent harm in future treaty (such as TRIPS, which was the basis for the EU proposal to allow software patents).
And we do licence enforcement, campaigning for open standards, campaigning against the criminalisation of the grey areas of copyright law, and we supported SAMBA in their push to make the documentation published by Microsoft usable by free software developers. And more, but if I stop to think, then this post won't appear high enough to be seen :-)
You can donate [fsfeurope.org], or join the Fellowship [fsfe.org].
Re:How many people benefit? (Score:5, Informative)
Agree with parent. You could also set aside the money for a few months and see which project actually has issues with funding. If I remember correctly from about 2 years ago, OpenBSD (and OpenSSH) had serious issues with funding at that time: http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/06/03/21/1555243.shtml [slashdot.org] .
Occasionally, a part-time dev may step forward and announce he/she is willing to work full time on the project for a period time, provided people are willing to financially support him/her. Those may be good times to sponsor as well.
Re:There Can Only Be One (Score:1, Informative)
You never hear RMS proclaming it should be called GNU/BSD.
Don't mix up GNU with GPL.
- Peder
Re:How many people benefit? (Score:4, Informative)
> run the OpenSSH project, but whatever.
Actually, you can make a donation specifically to OpenSSH as said on the donation page.
http://openssh.org/donations.html [openssh.org]
Of course most OpenSSH people are also OpenBSD people.
Qt (Score:2, Informative)
I would instead take a look at Troll Techs various products, and keep them in mind if you ever need some of that.
Re:Relevancy ? (Score:4, Informative)
Tax Deductible Gifts(USA) (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_in_the_Public_Interest [wikipedia.org]
Re:Making things complicated. (Score:3, Informative)
For the OP, I would take a look at a couple of factors:
1) which piece affects you the most?
2) which project is the poorest?
Personally, I prefer to donate to OpenBSD because
Mind you, I think donating to KDE is good too.