Speaking as a long time open source contributor, it is even better to contribute bug reports (detailed, replicable), assistance to folks on the users mailing lists, and code (if you are able).
Donating money to open source organizations is great, as there is almost always some overhead, but contributing in kind is even better!
That said, if you want to donate money, here are links to donate directly to a few open source foundations, off the top of my head:
I already do that--of course, one could always do more. Additionally, I never said a pledge had to be money--10% time would be great as well, i.e. FOSS fridays every other week or something.
With the donations, it would of course be up to the pledger, but I was thinking something more directed with higher bang for the buck. Some ideas there would be for specific tasks that never seem to get done, or via bounties, or for student contests.
In general though, I'm thinking more on a company basis rather than individual. My thought was that if a company could make a public pledge, they'd be more likely to embed it in their culture. Of course, it may be hard for existing companies to do it, so I'm thinking it may be more appropriate for startups.
In a previous job (security system tech), we could donate an install to charity - it would still show up in our numbers (for pay grades and bonuses and whatnot), but the money we would have made for that particular install would be donated. "Volunteering" had a fantastic effect in pulling the whole company together, and a lot of the time the money went toward somebody in the local community.
I would love to work for a company with a similar culture, where I could donate some number of hours per week/month to working on FOSS.
I wonder if the two could be combined. Give the money with a purpose. Surely most projects will have some long-standing tasks which have never been attempted or completed due to lack of time. The project's legal entity might not want to pay someone to work on the project directly (or there might not be such an entity), but to someone wanting to invest into the project that seems a useful option.
I for one don't think this is a very good idea. Firstly, I'm reminded of Jeff Atwood's article in 2008 (http://bit.ly/d82uSD) where he talks about discovering that the open source project he donated $5000 to simply had no way to use the money.
More over, as a developer open source software has never sat well with me. I don't understand how it got so hip and cool. I don't understand why anyone would want to participate. I'm damned good at my job... but I don't do it for free for anyone... My time is too valuable and my friends and family deserve to have as much time with me as possible. I know I'm mostly alone in this around these parts... But maybe someone can explain why so many people give away their free time using their hard earned, and valuable, skills for free.
Though I do appreciate all their hard work, and I use open source products, I just don't understand why they do it.
I never liked that Atwood post because he cherry picked one open source product to raise a stink about when there are thousands of other individual projects that can use donations. Also, the Apache Foundation, the PSF, the FSF, and many more organizations have a history of taking and using donations to advance the development and use of many open source projects.
As for your comments about not being motivated to work on FOSS or not understanding why it exists, I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion. I don't have the time or inclination to argue with you about why OSS exists and is important, but while it's here and actively helping me do my job, I don't understand an argument against supporting those projects with bug reports, patches, and yes, money.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I just have a hard time supporting something (financially) when I don't really understand the motivations of the people behind it. I'm all for bug reports and the like.
Why do you think you need to understand their motivations? It's a simple proposition: you give them money, and they make the software better because they are able to buy servers, take time off work, etc.
I think the OP hit in on the head when he used the word Tithe, a word loaded with Christian connotations. How can we understand the Free Software Movement from a religious perspective?
Some Data to Analyze : GNU Manifesto (some selected quotes)
"""
consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
...
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.
"""
Here RMS explicitly states that using and making software exists in some sort of moral universe where actions have moral implications. A central tenet to RMS's morality is evidently the Golden Rule which he defines as: "I like a program I must share it with other people who like it." By sharing RMS means of course sharing the code and all the rights to the code. If software is made, used or distributed in violation of this moral principle it dishonors the program and the user; cursing the software.
Thus, according to the GNU Manifesto, Free Software exists to make the fulfillment of our moral obligations possible. At the beginning of the Manifesto RMS says the movement needs money. The OP is advocating for providing such money on a monthly basis as a way to fulfill our obligation to ensure software can be used morally.
> But maybe someone can explain why so many people give away their free time using their hard earned, and valuable, skills for free.
The difference is that you think of programming as a job, whereas a lot of programmers think of it as a hobby that can also pay the bills.
You might as well ask why do people build model railroads, or airplanes?
A final thing: if you have to justify activities financially, it constrains the activities you'll be willing to undertake. There's a lot of fun stuff to do that is not financially defensible, at least initially.
This is fundamentally a job vs. calling thing. From my perspective I didn't understand how people could go into CS in university never having programmed before. I'm sure some of them are better programmers (and certainly employees) than I am, but it was new to me.
Maybe that's the difference... I don't love writing software... I'm good at it... My employer is extremely happy with the job I do... I think it's part of my job to follow the industry... follow the most recent trends... But I don't love this.
Whenever someone asks me if I like my job I tell them, "No, but I haven't thought of something else I'd rather do yet".
I don't think your answer fully addresses the question. Surely you can do it as a hobby and find a way to turn your hobby coding into something that makes money. Hell, isn't that half the reason most of us are here (@HN) watching people turn side projects into businesses and thinking about how to do it ourselves? It seem's contrary to the aims of the community to say they participate in open source projects because it is their hobby. There has to be more to the motivation than that.
Perhaps, It's a desire to have other folks that create software look at what you've done and see the good parts of it. Only a Software Engineer can see why this part here was tricky and clever and it's nice to have the kind of reinforcement. Often times a boss only cares about the result, they don't always revel in the tiny clever details that got there.
My love for programming is such that I enjoy doing it while at home, I enjoy working on it on the weekends, I think about what I want to do next all of the time.
If someone asks me my answers would be the complete opposite of yours. I am really happy with my job, I work with great people on new software, and new challenges that challenge me to think in different terms, provide new thoughts to the table and find ways to solve new and interesting problems that didn't exist yesterday.
That in and of itself is the reason I am a programmer. You are very different from me in that you are a 9 - 5 programmer whereas I am a 24/7 programmer.
The difference is that I write a whole lot of code outside of company time that is my own, and there is nothing better in the world than to be able to release code out into the wild to have someone find it, and use it to further their project, to be the cornerstone on which they build the next big thing that I can't imagine yet. Get improvements back, advice, comments, bug reports, and new ideas on where to take this new free software. I've already paid the bills, I've saved some money, I'm developing my skill set, why not release some of my knowledge out into the world for future generations to build upon?
Some of us just like programming enough to do it on our spare time.
Me, I am not at all certain the Web would have yet progressed beyond a 1998ish level without open source software and, perhaps more importantly, open standards.
It is all but certain that you have used FOSS with some frequency. If you have no innate desire to work on code on your own, perhaps you could view it as a debt to repay.
Agreed. As programmers we do not work in a vacuum. Our entire industry is built on abstractions. So unless you're programming in ASM you are definitely taking advantage of the work that others before you have done for free or that their company has released for free.
I think your objection is an (unintentional) red herring. Motivations are irrelevant from my perspective. My company (and other projects) are literally built on FOSS, so it makes sense (both reciprocally and selfishly) to try to improve it.
Money is actually a pretty good motivation for a lot of people who contribute to FOSS. It's not all about artist mentality.
75% of Linux is now written by paid developers. (http://apcmag.com/linux-now-75-corporate.htm) Many other large FOSS projects also have a varying number of paid developers. Since a lot of companies who employ such developers (e.g. Red Hat, Novell, Google) rely on FOSS for their business-critical applications, they have a good motivation to make sure that the software they use perform well. Of course there's also hobbyists, volunteers, and people like RMS who believe they have a profound obligation to promote FOSS.
there's also hobbyists, volunteers, and people like RMS who believe they have a profound obligation to promote FOSS.
I wouldn't consider that these two as completely distinct sets of people. Most of the paid Linux developers I know of (not necessarily a representative sample, but a fair few) started doing it as a hobby, and still do similar things as a hobby in their spare time. They're being paid to do it now because they were very good at it, and a particular company wants some say in exactly how it's done.
A former co-worker of mine put it pretty well: "Quiet! As long as they don't know that we'd do this stuff anyhow for free, they'll keep paying us to do it!"
Other responses have pointed out that many people just like programming, so they contribute without requiring payment. There's another reason that might appeal to your practical side which is basic economic utility - everyone gets to benefit from the specialized contributions of others.[1]
If there were no open source projects and you wanted to write the latest trendy web app, you'd have to either write or buy all of it which is horribly time-consuming or expensive. With open source, you can run a free web server and a free database server on a free OS and just write the business logic and presentation. For the latter part, you can leverage free application and javascript frameworks to speed up development.
At the end of the day no one cares if your application uses C/Postgres, Ruby/MongoDB, or C#.NET/MSSQL; they care if the application is useful. So all this contribution to open source helps everyone achieve the end goal (useful app) without getting lost along the way (implementing or buying the entire stack).
So why do people give away their free time and hard-earned, valuable skills? Everyone benefits.
This seems like a voluntary version of the "software tax" RMS wrote about way back in the day in the GNU manifesto (http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html, see “Programmers need to make a living somehow.”)
I guess it never caught on then, but perhaps now that most software companies benefit in some way from FOSS, it makes more sense. At any rate, you deserve much props for making this pledge.
A lot of employers will match your contributions up to some limit ($10,000 seems pretty standard), so if you do this, make sure you get your employer to match. You can actually get people to write some software with $20,000.
I think it is difficult to get these movements going among individuals. I think it is easier to establish this as a cultural norm among those businesses that make money from open source. If the goal is to raise more money for open source projects, then the fundraising will work best if it is some dedicated amount of a company's profits. I think the consumers of open source technologies would appreciate knowing that some tiny percentage of their funds go back to the projects that make it all possible. For instance, if every ISP (using open source software) was committed to sending .01% of their profits to the Apache Foundation, it would offer Apache a degree of independence from those who currently pay its bills, and I, for one, would be pleased to know that some of my money was going to the software that makes my sites possible.
The donations need to be automated as much as possible. At wpquestions.com we send out some small amount of money every month to the people who have created plugins for WordPress, whenever a question is posted about that plugin. The whole process is automated, no one needs to think about it. I think establishing this as a cultural norm throughout the open source community would help make the open source eco-system more vibrant. And lots of small payments from many small businesses probably allows greater freedom of maneuver (for the open source projects) than having a few big projects paid for by a few big corporations - simply looking at Oracle's handling of Java convinces me of the dangers of having all funding come from just a few sources.
It’s a wonderful idea. But won’t this be sending most money to those who least need it — e.g. lots to the big projects, and none to the little guys who spend days to months a year, but no more, on small, lesser-used but valuable open-source projects? I would like to see those little guys get a bigger chunk.
This sounds like flattr to me, particularly since they were going to set things up so you could repeatedly flattr the same sites (not sure if that's happened yet). Is there is a philosophical difference?
Part of me thinks that if all the companies that exist and thrive thanks to open source did this, we would advance tech much quicker. On the other hand, maybe it is the constraints and passion alone that have kept the community at its present level of quality.
In the same kind of approach, you have 1% for the Planet. When you are part of the organization, like my company, you pay 1% of your turnover to one or more accredited environmental organizations each year. 1% for the Planet is not a middle man, they just control that you paid and allow you to use its label in your communication.
In a way, I think it's better for open source projects that need money to go the AGPL route. The way I see it with pledging is that you'd be getting companies that are already donating/contributing back to open source projects. Whether this will be more or less than what they're already contributing remains to be seen.
I'm not wed to it--no pun intended. It seemed fitting, but feel free to start a discussion about changing it on the newly created group: http://groups.google.com/group/fosstithe
Donating money to open source organizations is great, as there is almost always some overhead, but contributing in kind is even better!
That said, if you want to donate money, here are links to donate directly to a few open source foundations, off the top of my head:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html
http://www.python.org/psf/donations/
https://my.fsf.org/donate