Donating keeps FOSS alive


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Most people misinterpret FOSS, which stands for Free and Open Source Software. The free in FOSS means freedom, not free as in price. 

The reason people license their code as FOSS is because they want everyone and anyone to be able to use the program. 

If you have the ability to donate or support FOSS work, you should. If you don't, you are actively hurting FOSS. Donating or supporting FOSS does not always mean money; it can also mean time and knowledge. If you contribute back to FOSS, then you will be supporting it. 

Many businesses use FOSS without donating or contributing time or knowledge.

I will be referencing zloirock at core-js as his story became very popular in February of 2023. He talked about how 52% of the top 1,000 websites used his code, yet he was only making about $1,000 a month to maintain it.

Most people can agree that something like Wikipedia should be free and open to everyone, especially if you don't have access to that information in any other way. This is where donating or supporting comes in; if you don't donate money or try and make the platform a better place when you have the ability to, why should Wikipedia keep spending money to host the website? There is no reason for them to spend millions of their own funds to host Wikipedia and go into debt themselves. 

I am also not saying you need to donate $100 to every platform you use; I am saying if you have the ability to, donate like $5 to a FOSS program, website, or library you use a lot. Or even donate to that program's dependencies and their dependencies, and so on and so forth. If you are an individual, this can add up to a lot of money, but for companies, it is almost nothing. 

If all the companies just give $1,000 for the software they use, the developers of the software can make their fair share. This is not happening right now, as you can see if you look at core-js open collective. Most of the donors are individuals or FOSS projects themselves. If this person made their code closed source and forced companies to pay $1,000 a year for his library, he could easily be making 6-7 figures a year. 

This xkcd post talks about this exact problem. All modern digital infrastructure depends on a project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003. 

If a developer is not making anything or gaining any help from a project, they are fully allowed to stop maintaining that code or service. If you use a FOSS website, project, or program, please think about donating to it on behalf of those who can't.