There were some posts over the holiday season asking for projects to donate to, and for those who have the means to comfortably do so, this is an important gift to consider.

If there’s only a limited amount each of us is able to give, I assume there’s no point giving it all to, for one example, The Linux Foundation, because a small personal donation is trivial next to the ~$15,000,000 USD they receive from sponsors dependent on them[1]. I understand that funding sources can be a major and profound source of bias[2] and ideally we would be, for example, helping to make Firefox independent of Google, but until we have more collective power, it’s not worth letting smaller important projects struggle instead.

So, which important projects should we leave to the sponsors, and which really need our support?

  • Orbituary@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1911·
    1 day ago

    Why do people ask questions like this? Isn’t, “Which worthwhile FOSS projects are underfunded?” a better way to say it?

    It’s just so kludgy.

    • Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org
      31·
      10 hours ago

      Because when they ask that, people say wikipedia or firefox and not things like archive

      • Apathy@lemmy.world
        41·
        15 hours ago

        What makes it a different question, I’m ignorant and ask that you explain

        • comfy@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          7 hours ago

          “Which FOSS projects have enough funding that we should donate elsewhere?” is more-or-less asking “Which FOSS projects are overfunded?”, making it almost the opposite of “Which worthwhile FOSS projects are underfunded?”

          Plenty of projects I rely on are underfunded or adequately funded, and there are many thousands of underfunded projects. So I’ll have no shortage of projects to consider. By instead asking for the overfunded projects, I can simply cross them off my list of projects to donate to.

          • Apathy@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 hours ago

            Thank you, I understand

            I think orbituary was trying to point out why do we not ask and give “notice” to underfunded project rather than those that already are funded and I feel both of you are trying to convey the same sentiment.

            I could be dead wrong as well but thank you for bringing this to notice

        • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
          41·
          14 hours ago

          Not OP but I would say because it is a smaller list where if you want to donate and make a big difference to the project then you know it is good to give money to pretty much anyone other than the over funded ones.