this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

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Hello.

Although we pirate for various reasons (ideology, no money to spend on entertainment, etc.) I wanted to know if the community actually donates money to any FOSS project? Nearly all of us use a torrent client based on libtorrent (qBit, Transmission, Deluge) or an open source Usenet client such as SABnzbd to consume our pirated content, yet I wonder, how many people here donate to FOSS projects?

I donated 15 euro to KDE in the past, as well as 10 euro to qBittorrent to keep the projects alive. I think that software that respects it's users deserves to be rewarded for doing so. What is your opinion?

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 year ago

No. But I should. Probably time to start.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago

You're kind of Robin Hood if you steal software and give the money to FOSS projects. 😄

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago

No, but I'm disabled on a next to nothing/gifts from family budget. I sincerely appreciate those that can donate and share my work on git freely.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I donate hundreds of hours of my time every year maintaining several open source projects. Does that count?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes it counts and more than monetary contributions do

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Agreed, do what you can but contributing if you have the skills and time for me is like being a superhero

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Yes, it does

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, I donate once a year to the projects I use most. I allocate about 200€ and split it up among those.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Yep to the EFF, a few GNU projects, and previously to random developers I liked.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I donate 10€ to Arch Linux and NixOS monthly because they let me run all my stuff and occasionally to projects I like. Especially the ones that save me money that would go into media consumption etc.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Yes yes and yes! These people are a lifeline for people like me who can't code. People like me gain so much. Free is fun, but if you can donate, even one $, €, £ or other.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Yes just a couple of bucks here and there.

Almost BECAUSE they’ve done it for free, I like to chip in .

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

I never used to donate to any FOSS project, now I donate every alternative month since I realized what I liked about the internet and tech is being taken away by greedy corporates.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I donate to the OSM foundation as a basic member and 6€ monthly to organic maps. I spend a lot of time contributing to OSM as well. it's great to be able to see and use my own work.

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

For anyone that wants to contribut and have some fun, use StreetComplete on F-droid.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Yes, you should support open source when possible if the project(s) you use are beneficial to you! Your dollars are far more valuable to help out a small team of independent volunteers vs multi-billion dollar corporations that really don't need it.

If you can't donate money, donate your time / skills or do both! Make the world of software a better place, one small contribution at a time!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just as an aside, donating does not have to be monetary. Helping (if possible) with development, triaging issues or helping with support/forums of any kind, along with in general filing good issues goes miles for FOSS projects, especially larger ones with only a few developers.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I don't sail the seas too much, but I've been donating to FOSS projects ever since I left the church. This is my tithe.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Yes. To the uBO list maintainers and Jellyfin.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I dont have much money But i always love the message in Pirated Stuff "if you like it buy it!"

So one day i thought "come one at least pay 1 buck, because if everybody would pay at least 1 buck to a Project they like it would be an awesome Project!"

So i started with one Thing (i think gadgetbridge it was) and donated 1€ every year. So i did it to twelve Projects (1 for each month) and since i got my First Job, i pushed it up to 5€

So right now i Sonate 5€ a year to 12 Foss / other Projects i REALLY belive in and love (and use on a daily base) everything Else will be Still pirated (excwpr for winrar! I PAYD FOR WINRAR!!!)

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My man, I can barely afford to pay to heat my sick, elderly parents living room (yes just that room, the rest of the house stays cold, can't afford it).

I'm not donating money to anyone at all and won't for the foreseeable future. When I do, it'll be to cancer research <3

But I believe FOSS is a noble cause and if I were wealthy I absolutely would.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Yes absolutely.

Pro tip: choose an appropriate annual budget, divide that amongst different projects in a logical way.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I currently do not have the ability to donate, but I will once I do.

CW: opinionI believe FOSS developers spending time to maintain something I (or others) use should be paid for that time, especially if it's their free time.

Possibly off-topic, but I think, even if you donate to them, you aren't automatically entitiled to a FOSS developer's time. It's your privilege to use something they made in their time for not you, and you have no right to demand them to change anything about it, so you should at least have the decency to be nice.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I donate to Thunderbird. Monthly :)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

After I got a good job, I started donating to FOSS projects. They have already proven to be useful, unlike other crowdfunded projects in the inception stage. My bill for software now exists for opensource software, whereas when Windows was my main OS, it was non-existent. I love the option to give money. That's freedom.

Fuck closed source software.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes I do, and I maintain a couple FOSS projects as well.

edit: with that said, the FOSS projects I maintain do not accept donations.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I have a budget saved for donations that comes from overflow in other areas, when there is overflow. I spend it on the projects I use and like most.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I've donated to VLC multiple times in the past and have a subscription for wikipedia

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah, donate to kde every now and then.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A couple.

Lemmy included

I straight up pay for usenet and indexers though. Probably the same as a Netflix sub

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Of course. I donate to the Lemmy developers, Wikipedia and a few others.

But donating is kinda hard sometimes because I would really like a system, where dependencies also get some.
Take Lemmy for example. It's built with rust and uses lots of crates (libraries). So why not give like 50% to Lemmy and the other half to the used crates. And those also split with their dependencies.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I donated to:GrapheneOS, Wikipedia, FSF and Piped Devs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Personally, I'm still just a student, so I don't even have much money for myself. However, I've been compiling a list of projects to which I'd like to donate one day when I get a decent job. It includes many apps from FDroid, a couple of distros and a Japanese dictionary app that I absolutely love. I'd also like to create free-libre apps too, so I can give back to the community in the future.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yep, donated/bought to Cryptomator/Fair email/Dav5x... Mostly one-time contributions, though. Better than nothing, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I was going to but I forgot, until recently, so I made a donation to a project that is essential to my workflow, that being Qtile, a window manager and Wayland compositor that is just amazing, has an incredible built-in bar, and very low resource usage, especially on the Wayland backend, and it keeps on getting better and closer to perfect, so my donation was to support the further development of the project and to express my gratitude for its existence.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

When I can, I do. I’ve donated to several projects over the years.

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

I did donate first to Mozilla but switched to Thunderbird because I think they're doing a better job. But now that I'm a stay at home dad for one year I stopped because I don't have any income and need to keep my money together while only living from savings until I'm back at work.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thunderbird is a Mozilla project tho?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I release code under GPL licences , I seed distros and have contributed financially in the past.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yep, monthly towards Mozilla and Wireguard.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I’ve donated to KDE before and plan on doing again. I plan on increasing the frequency when I graduate and have a job.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

No, but I plan to as soon as I can financially afford to.

There are countless Foss tools I'm using that deserve the money.

Currently I try to "contribute" by releasing my stuff into the open source space for free.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I absolutely do, not necessarily on the pirating tools I use , though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I donate to Linux Mint every now and then.

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