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Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

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271–280 of 299 posts

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internet Archive [important would be some pro bono legal help due to the recent turn of events, perhaps] I have a really hard time with this one. Their current legal situation didn't just happen to them: they made an intentional choice to do something which ~everyone who knew anything about law warned them would be catastrophic and are now facing the catastrophe that they were warned about. They acted like a small…

honest question to all: how do you keep pushing boundaries once you've been successful enough to transition from a scrappy activist with nothing to lose to foundational infrastructure? I get the simple answer is reduced risks, stop doing the things that made you successful, but is there another path? Surely if OpenAI can somehow go from benevolent saviour of humanity to naked profit megacorp we can find a way for the…

Why does it need to be the Internet Archive that takes big risks?

In the startup space it's common for a founder to, after a successful launch, hand off control of the organization to someone else who's better equipped to drive the company in slow and steady mode. If the people in charge of the Internet Archive feel like they're best equipped to be revolutionaries rather than maintaining the ground they won in the past, maybe it's time for them to transition into a new organization and hand off the IA to people who are able to run it in maintenance mode.

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#272
I donate to FutureMe.org because I like the service, and want to see it continue. I used to be able to schedule a monthly donation through Paypal (I think), but something happened, and now I have to remember to send a donation out every year.

My other donations go out monthly to Internet Archive, EFF, and Thunderbird.

There for a while, The TOR Project had a thing where I could contribute by running (paying for) a node on a hosting provider (I think it might have been AWS?). That effort died on the vine and was shut down.

For content creators, I donate to Phoronix.

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#273
I haven't donated yet because I was unemployed, but now that I have a more than decent salary, here are the projects that will be the receiver:

- KeePassXC

- KDE

- Ladybird Browser

- Khan Academy

- qBittorrent

- Actual

I'm planning on having a fixed budget and giving the same amount to all of them.

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#274
There’s something that’s embittered me about the subscription model and projects made purely for greed. I particularly enjoy supporting projects fiscally which that are passion projects that they could probably charge more for.

https://www.keybr.com - shows ads if you want to use it for free or you can pay a small fee to remove ads. The code is open-sourced so you can make your own. Helped me get the hang of split keyboards and was money well spent to support.

https://enso.sonnet.io - ingenious idea that has helped me write without loosing focus editing myself. The solo developer guy shares an entertaining blog full of illustrations and rich content. his project is available to download in full from Gumroad for a small one time fee.

If there’s any projects you know of like these please share them!

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#275
I donate the following Projects and Lobbies on a monthly or yearly basis:

Projects

- Thunderbird (daily driver in my job)

- Debian (also daily driver in my job)

- FreeBSD (daily driver)

- LadyBird Browser (first "real new" browser since ~20 years, privacy first, open source)

Lobbies / Organisations

- The Chaos Computer Club (CCC): Advocate digital rights, Public Awareness and Education, Legal and Ethical Guidance (Advantage: Network, Learning, Nice People)

- Any political part you like: ... (Network, Learning, Nice People)

- The Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty): Human Rights Advocacy etc.

And I go to Conferences and Meetups and pay for it (also when they are free, since i have some money)

Before also:

- FSF

- EFF

- Tor

- Firefox

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#276
post #112

- Signal - Wikipedia - MyNoise.net - various Emacs package maintainers - Internet Archive If you’ve never seen https://mynoise.net you should check it out. It’s a beautiful collection of exceptionally high-quality recordings that you can tune to create the perfect soundscape for whatever your mood moves you to.

I think signal is already funded by USA taxpayers. Wikipedia has a ton of money and for a few decades doesn't really need any donations.

Wikipedia and Signal both do me tremendous good. I think that's reason enough to donate to them. I don't think an organization/person/etc. has to be in crisis or short on funds to "earn" a donation.

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#278
Here are the ones I can recall donating to in recent years: KiCAD Arduino tic-80

I'd like to donate to FreeCAD at some point, but the last time I had spare money to do that, I ended up paralyzed trying to figure out what would be the most impactful way to do so. Then Ondsel came and made a subscription the obvious choice (I thought) then they went away.

Ones that I probably should donate to but just haven't gotten to: Inkscape Gimp uv/ruff/ty

There are probably many more. My goal is to at least donate to any project that I make money from, preferably in a similar amount to what I might be paying otherwise. That is an awful lot to track down though, considering how many pieces there are for doing software development. Thus, I've been more focused on media and other engineering tools.

Re: Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

#280
In terms of software, I currently donate to:

- Servo: Because I think browser engines are critical infrastructure for the web, and we are in dire need of one that is easily maintained, secure, embeddable, and isn't beholden to Google.

- Signal Foundation: Because our chat platforms and governments are spying on us, and Signal offers an alternative.

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