What projects does the community like to donate to?
In the past, I've donated to EFF, Mint, Wikipedia (though this is controversial), Project Gutenburg and the Internet Archive. I just stumbled on torservers.net where you can fund Tor exit nodes. I guess GPG would also be a good candidate — the maintainer, Werner Koch's struggle for funding has been discussed here on SN before.
Do you guys have any other recommendations? Bounty Source looks interesting.
Related Stories
ProPublica has an article on Werner Koch, author of GnuPG, and his difficulties in getting funding.
The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive.
Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.
Although Werner appears to have resolved his issues, with a grant from the Linux Foundation and various donations, this article does provide a history of GnuPG and raise the issues around the funding of some key software infrastructure.
Also covered at Hackernews and LWN.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:47PM
I've been a participant since it started and a couple of years back I felt that I finally had enough money that I should donate to some of these things. I also donated to wikipedia and then wished I hadn't after reading about their methods.
I also once joined a Free Software association, which didn't amount to much.
But I have an on-going subscription to Slackware and I wear the t-shirts (yes, I'm a sad geek).
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by joekiser on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:25PM
This year:
Firefox
Goodwill
Jolla Tablet
Wikipedia
MilkyWay@home
SoylentNews
The Linux Foundation
In the past:
FreeBSD Foundation
Midori Browser
VLC
Diaspora*
Adblock
Debt is the currency of slaves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:37PM
I donated to Techdirt, Wikipedia.
Another one not listed (though I didn't donate anything to it) maybe public knowledge or even the pirate party.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @07:18AM
What is it about Wikipedia that got you to stop donating, maybe I missed it. Thanks.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday April 20 2015, @08:46PM
Here's one: here [theregister.co.uk]. There are others. Google is your friend.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:55PM
Even as struggling college student I have been giving $10 a month since Snowden leaks. Now that I graduated and about to start new job, I think that is going up! I also donate to Wikipedia, but less regularly. It is probably my most visited site on the internet by far.
(Yes I haven't donated to SN YET! I will I will...)
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:01PM
The EFF is the big one for me as they do good work and they're becoming more and more important. I've also contributed to GPG and will probably start contributing to KDE development.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:05PM
I used to donate to EFF using Humble Bundle [humblebundle.com]. Now it seems that EFF is not in the list of charities you can pick.
Internet Archive.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday April 20 2015, @05:26PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @05:53PM
It used to be just EFF and Child's Play exclusively in the beginning, and a handful of bundles over 2 years, but now there's one every week or so and a more diverse group of charities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Humble_Bundles [wikipedia.org]
I think I lost interest when it went from 5 bundles a year to 50.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday April 20 2015, @06:23PM
Now they have a lot of bundles I don't care about. I pass on anything that has a big name in it like Square or EA. I don't like how many of the bundles now have Windows only titles. Don't care about their book or weekly bundles and I never buy from the always available store.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:21PM
I gave $1024 to the videolan guys about 10 years ago.
I asked them not to put my name in any sort of public acknowledgementm because I didn't want the exposure.
But they didn't even say thanks in a private email or anything. Kinda bummed me out.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:23PM
I like you.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:44PM
(Not the op)
To the extent I donate I wouldn't want anyone knowing how much I donate or to whom. It's none of their business and if people know I will be hit up by every charity organization possible and hounded by them. You can't even go to the store without random people hitting you up for money and if you let them think you are generous they will hound you every minute for donations. And it's not like I have a lot of money (and I don't really donate a whole lot). I can see why no one would want their names listed on charitable lists.
(Score: 2) by ah.clem on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:31PM
I kinda agree with this post. We have a regular list of places we contribute to on an annual basis, and I have some websites I belong to that I support with contributions (full disclosure - not SN yet, will get to it, I promise) but I don't think making the details public is such a great idea (although I had no idea about Wikipedia, and they are off the list as of now). Also, we don't claim our contributions on our taxes; it's really no one's business but ours and the recipient. And I am a sucker for the checkout deal - five bucks for this, five bucks for that, more during the holidays. But I feel fortunate to have it to give, so I don't mind the asking.
The one I hate, and I don't do, is when the fire department pulls their trucks into one of our major intersections and then stares while pushing boots at me when I'm stopped at the red light; it feels like extortion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:57PM
The one I hate, and I don't do, is when the fire department pulls their trucks into one of our major intersections and then stares while pushing boots at me when I'm stopped at the red light; it feels like extortion.
In Massachusetts they have people from jimmy fund [jimmyfund.org] come around in the movie theaters before the show starts. You are trapped in your seat and they shove a popcorn bucket / collection-plate in front of you and make you say no. The first time that happened to me, shortly after moving there, I simply could not believe it. I thought it was performance art or something. High-pressure guilt tactics feel just as icky as high-pressure sales tactics of any sort. I wouldn't put up with that shit when buying a car, no way in hell am I putting up with it from an organization that claims to be "good." I stopped going to movies shortly after that. There are no solicitors in my home theater.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:17PM
I donate to the FSF. [fsf.org]
When I'm not using my own custom toolchain, GNU is my go-to userland/dev toolchain. Since I use GNU+Linux, GNU+BSD, and even GNU+Windows I don't have to fret over incompatibilities in compiler versions. I never saw the advantage of targeting every compiler when one compiler can target everything... Try as I might to write standards compliant code there are still nuanced differences between gcc, Comeau, and Clang (VS isn't interested in standards compliance, so I never bothered).
When I compared the CPU usage of executables in my dev environment most of it is GNU code, so I donate to them.
I've fallen out of love with the EFF since they are backing the new bastardized "network neutrality" which is now permeated with censorship-ready language such as "lawful content"... Their conflation of "unlawful" with illegal is just daft. "Lawful" means explicitly legal through legislation; Unlawful means everything from unregulated, new, unknown or illegal -- Things not explicitly legislated into legality. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance. I can't explain this level of ineptitude among lawyers and thus will attribute it to malice. It's a shame, but I produce systems that emit "unlawful" data across the web so I had "better be safe than sorry" and not fund idiots who back what "Network Neutrality" has become via the old bait and switch. "ooh, the public likes X, let's change X to be something else and let the uneducated fools vote for it, it's not like they read legislation... Now, if only we can keep alleged proponents of 'Freedom'(tm) from ruining the established PR, we're good to go", happens more often than you think; See also: paper-clipping hated legislation to bipartisan funding programs for orphans or veterans.
I used to donate to the Linux Foundation, but supporting Microsoft EUFI is against my religion. I'm a Corebootian [coreboot.org], so my OS's /boot/ is in firmware. I measure boot time in milliseconds, and it's just as secure as EUFI since EUFI is firmware meant to load your boot image securely -- moving the rootkit hacks to target firmware. So if the OS is in firmware already then you don't need the over-engineered, flakey, complicated, patent encumbered, proprietary FAT32 + crypto EUFI bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:20PM
The Free Software Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so your donation is tax-deductible in the US.
Tax deductibility TL;DR: Give your money to whoever you like* instead of the government!
*well almost [irs.gov]
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:33PM
That is nitpicking. You will never get U.S. legislation on net neutrality that doesn't have the "lawful content" language somewhere.
Meanwhile, EFF heavily supports privacy, encryption, anonymity protections and technologies. They support the means to allow access [eff.org] to the "unlawful" or censored content.
Wait, what's this? EFF have critiqued the FCC's net neutrality plans INCLUDING THE USE OF THE WORDS "LAWFUL CONTENT":
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/fcc-broadcasting-rules-wont-help-internet-video-thrive [eff.org]
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/net-neutrality-are-we-there-yet [eff.org]
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/todays-net-neutrality-order-win-few-blemishes [eff.org]
https://www.eff.org/mention/us-net-neutrality-has-massive-copyright-loophole [eff.org]
https://www.eff.org/mention/fcc-net-neutrality-regulations-include-one-really-scary-sentence [eff.org]
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/fcc-keeping-eye-interconnection-more-clarity-needed [eff.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @11:08AM
You will never get U.S. legislation on net neutrality that doesn't have the "lawful content" language somewhere.
We'll never get US legislation on net neutrality that doesn't encourage censorship and privacy invasions (or else how will they determine what is lawful content?)? Well, we need to push them to do so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @11:37PM
I never saw the advantage of targeting every compiler when one compiler can target everything
There is an advantage to targeting icc separately because it usually optimizes code much better than anything else when you target Intel CPUs. On the other hand, icc is a commercial software and it's output is intentionally crippled for third party CPUs so it's definately not suitable for all purposes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:38PM
I contribute generously to the cause of increasing the entropy of the universe.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:22PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:00PM
I personally like a more personal touch to donations. I donate to political campaigns, local charities, and Go Fund Me [gofundme.com] campaigns worth donating to.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lemming on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:11PM
I support EDRi (European Digital Rights) [edri.org], the European counterpart of the EFF. As they are less known, they receive far less donations. They work on issues about e.g. data retention requirements, copyright and fair use restrictions, cybercrime, filtering and blocking of internet content and notice-and-takedown procedures of websites. In fact, the EFF (which has an European office) is one of the 33 member organizations of EDRi.
In the past, I also donated to The Document Foundation (LibreOffice), my local Pirate Party, EFF, Wikileaks, Diaspora, Mixxx,...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:22PM
I don't donate enough. EFF most years.
If you ex-out tithing (which doesn't really count as charity in my book any more than club membership dues) the average American gives 1% of income, skewing higher at both ends of the income continuum.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Monday April 20 2015, @01:23AM
Same here. I'm guilty of donating to causes at the front of my mind, like the Haiku project and code.org, and ignoring some really important ones like the aforementioned EFF. And that reminds me, I really need to get around to buying Slackware 14.1 discs. Years ago I would only buy major versions (9.0, 10.0 etc) but lately I feel led to buy each point release as well, to keep the project going. Slackware is important now more than ever with the dwindling number of actual GNU/Linux distros.
(Score: 1) by wisnoskij on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:30PM
I like donating to The Human Fund ("Money For People").
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday April 20 2015, @12:41AM
Dunno why I don't branch out, but for 20 years I donate every year to the EFF, Alzheimer's Foundation, and Helen Woodward Animal Center.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @05:49AM
Dunno why I don't branch out, but for 20 years I donate every year to the EFF, Alzheimer's Foundation
Do you mean you don't remember why you don't branch?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @03:58AM
Because it's so much less annoying to me than MySQL, MSSQL etc.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 20 2015, @06:20PM
HumbleBundle gives you a chance to get some fun games and donate to Charity. I have bough a few bundles, so I at least have donated some to those projects.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 20 2015, @06:24PM
Yeah, a preview might have helped me catch my typo. *bought
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"