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What FOSS projects are most in need of funding? I'd like to help if I can.
I'm also looking for projects only related to FOSS, or "in-the-spirit" of FOSS.
Blender is looking for funding to integrate better into professional industry and provide and open source Autodesk replacement
Linux mint or something like it. We need to make them better than Windows and macOS
archive.org
It was just attacked by hackers a few months ago, no to mention all the lawsuits they've been getting, and cost of maintenance of TERABYTES of data. They really need the funding to survive.
Edit: Missed the FOSS part, but still, its worth mentioning. archive.org is not an open source software, but they are a non-profit doing something that benefits all of us. And they are transparent about how they operate. More like a "Free and Transparent Community Service", rather than "FOSS". And not to mention, the many FOSS software they could preserve in case they stop getting maintained, so they could get picked up later, and not be forever lost. It goes hand-in-hand with the philosophy of FOSS: benefiting society.
Pretty sure the internet archive is dealing with Petabytes, if not Exabytes.
Yea, I have terabytes of data in my closet
SFC ("Software Freedom Conservancy") is doing good work on a legal front that may well result in a lot more consumer electronic devices (like smart TVs) having fully FOSS OSs available.
More info at https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
This is fascinating as I didn't even know about it for one, and for two it's based on having legal standing as a customer of the product, not the developer of the GPL code. I'll be interested to see where this goes.
Millions of people use beautifulsoup4, but most probably donβt realize that a core library that powers it, soupsieve, is effectively maintained by one person. In the spirit of the xkcd you linked, Isaac Muse could probably use some funding
Not sure if itβs directly related, but I donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Theyβre quite active in the technology space and I feel that they also carry the FOSS ethos.
I didn't know they take donations. Good to know.
The ones you use. If you use KDE, Thunderbird, Gimp or whatnot you should consider donating to those specifically.
Still, don't forget Wikipedia, it's one of the greatest Open Source projects of all time.
One thing I found the hard way is that majority of backends for imagick, the suite that powers almost every file conversion and manipulation you see on the internet, are maintained by, at most, one person, if not abandoned completely. I'd say that'd be a good one to donate to, and from which most people would benefit from.
Bash is mantained by only one guy named Chet and almost all linux devices in the world use it. https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
To be fair, he's got a day job as an IT architect in an university, so I think he's set in regards to finances. Codevelopers on the other hand, those would come handy - especially for knowledge transfer
Doesnβt look like there is a way to donate to him?
GraphenOS
Fdroid
Signal
KDE
Wikipedia
Open street map
I don't know if it needs funding but I think a good contender for the project referenced in the comic is NTP the Network Time Protocol. It's used in almost every computer in existence. Syncing up times over an unreliable network is an incredibly hard problem and basically only one person on the planet knows exactly how it works. And he's set to retire. Or maybe he's already retired. Been a while since I've read about that.
And he's set to retire. Or maybe he's already retired. Been a while since I've read about that.
David Mills is dead, but there are other people.
I donate to the one I'm using right now: https://join-lemmy.org/donate
Not money per se, I believe more hands are necesary to assist/succeed Werner Koch. He is doing a critical task for the internet, and last I read, he is the only one on it.
FreeCAD!
Also KiCad
Libreboot.
I provided testing and funding (not as a developer) for computers like the 9020, 9010, 7010, and 780 OptiPlex, as well as the E4300 Latitude and T1700 Precision. All it takes is some collaboration with others in the community to make it possible!
Some ideas
LibreOffice or other open source office suites. Rich word processors, spreadsheet, and slideshow software are seldom thought about but extremely important in the information age, and the duopoly of Microsoft and Google would like nothing more than to see the open source alternatives die so they can take full control of your documents.
Especially if you use Linux as a daily driver: KDE, GNOME, XFCE, Lxqt, other desktop environments. Unless you know how to do everything from the command line, they're probably the things allowing you to use Linux at all. Think about how much funding Windows or Mac development gets, that's because making a full graphical shell and suite of up to date system apps is difficult as fuck and they're massive codebases that require constant maintenance. One could even argue that their development and maintenance is a bigger undertaking than the Linux kernel itself yet most Linux users never think about them, nor do they have the backing of large companies like the kernel does because pretty much all of them use Windows on their workstations even if their server infrastructure runs Linux. And high quality graphical environments are absolutely critical if we're ever to have hope of Linux being adopted by the general public and not just developers and power users. If you use Linux as your main OS and have the cash to spare, considering tossing even a quarter of the cost of a Windows license you didn't buy to your DE of choice and do your part in ensuring that DE stays usable in the future.
Here's a few I can think of (without knowing whether or not they desperately need it):
wikipedia
brings massive amounts of information to the public, worldwide, in almost every language, for free without advertisements
If all answers are "yes", donate to them.
OpenSSL?
Octoprint (web interface for 3d printers) is one of my favorite open source projects
Don't know if my contributions are best (or can be placed under these lists) but they are ones I enjoy and appreciate
the fediverse instance that I use and want to support
Why Lemmy.ca?
Asking cause I've only really been exposed to .world and .ml and would like to know the advantages and disadvantages of switching up.
Because I'm Canadian and the instance is Canadian moderated by people in Canada who do their best to keep the service and servers as Canadian as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the servers hosting the instance were liquid cooled with maple syrup, the racks held together with hockey sticks and hockey tape and the whole thing guarded by polar bears.
Hello, you might be interested to this post I loved and enjoyed to read: https://www.arscyni.cc/file/take_my_money.html
@comma@midwest.social This is an extremely thorough answer directly to your question. It even has the same xkcd comic in the conclusion!
My opinion: We really need to be supporting this stuff with tax money. Meantime give money to orgs that advocate for related causes to benefit all or distribute grants. EFF, FSF, Right 2 Repair, public and specialty libraries.
This is literally carnap.io for formal logic teachers. Just a dude in Nebraska holding all of us up. He's not even an academic anymore!
You can donate to the general fund of Software in the Public Interest and let them figure out which of their projects (Debian is the most prominent one) needs the money most.
https://www.spi-inc.org/donations/
One advantage over Software Freedom Conservancy is that, if my memory serves, SFC criticized Richard Stallman and his appointment to the FSF board over the manufactured controversies of the last few years, SPI didn't.
Proton, the Swiss based, privacy focused VPN and cloud services provider does a $10 raffle for a lifetime accounts with all proceeds and a match up to $150k to a list of ten privacy/foss focused charities & organizations. Proton isnβt itself a non profit in need of funding per say but they do good work and itβs an easy way to put a small amount towards some worthy cause, and possibly win a decent product in the process. Wont post links to avoid looking like a shill, but the list on their page for the raffle might also be a good place to look if youβre wanting to donate to something directly.
Currently ongoing until Jan 5 2024. $10 per ticket. https://shop.proton.me/products/2024-lifetime-raffle-ticket
Where will the funds go?
Proceeds will go to 10 organizations selected with the support of our community and to a handful of past fundraisers beneficiaries, with Proton matching up to $150,000 in donations. The new recipients this year are: