Hello, I started donating to my favourite open-source projects a couple years ago, but stopped about 6 months ago for different reasons and wanted to get back into it.

I wanted to ask if anyone here has a set system or process they follow when donating

  • How much money do you donate? A set amount, whatever you feel like, a percentage of your earnings?

  • When do you donate? Whenever you remember, on the first of the month, Thursdays?

  • Do you have a minimum donation amount?

  • How do you decide what projects to support? Do you forego donations if you’ve contributed in other ways? Do you keep a list?

  • Do you donate to all equally or do you have some sort of ranking? Is it by amount of use, subjective preference, something else?

  • What platforms do you prefer using? Liberapay, Opencollective, Patreon, ko-fi, Paypal, Monero, actual post?

So far the system I’ve devised for myself would go something like:

  • put 2 % of all my earnings, whatever they are, in a separate account
  • every quarter (on the first of January, April, July and October) donate the full amount of money in the account (with a minimum of 5 €, so as not to lose a big amount in fees)
  • keep a ranked list of projects that I’ve used or deemed important or promising in the last three months (projects I donated to recently go to the bottom of the list), things at the top get more money than things at the bottom
  • prioritise Liberapay since it’s open-source itself
  • @Linus_Torvalds
    3•3 months ago

    I am all in favor for spreading donations across many - especially smaller - projects. I think that there are two levels to donations:

    • The monetary one. Donating helps fund development either by paying for a full-time dev or by helping the dev stay financially stable to do a bit less work hours so they have time for the project.
    • The psychological one. Most people that publish their code online are not expecting this to become big. And when a stranger from the internet appreciates their code enough for a donation this is a huge motivational factor.

    I even tend to think that donating 5€ more to GIMP is less valuable than giving the money to some random project.