Is there a point in supporting projects?

Questions
1

There is this thing that bothers my mind a bit. Do you think there is a point in supporting a small projects financially?

The thing is… Recently it was Session that got into financial troubles. Yeah I know you don’t like Session, but this is just an example. Or perhaps Cryptpad is asking me for supporting them from time to time.

Or course I do want to support privacy projecst and I am really happy they exist.

At the same time - will it actually help? What if I donated them and it helps them a bit, but soon they get into the financial troubles again? So I might start to donate them regularly, but it might still not be enough and they still can go bankcrupt and disappear. How can I know they still won’t get into financial troubles soon? How could I know there isn’t only a very tiny number of people supporting them and we can’t carry the project?

How often do you support and donate many tiny privacy-oriented projects?

I know it’s hard for developers not having a huge corporation as Google behind their butt, but it’s also hard to us users to live in this unceirtainy that the project won’t disappear one day.

Thanks for any insights :slight_smile:

2

There are never guarantees that what you donate will be enough unless you are given full financial details and possibly some financial control. But there’s a fairly strong chance that if no one donates, there will be fewer projects available.

And if I’m pointing a finger at you, here, I’ve got four more pointed back at me, because I always tend to reserve my donations for local food banks and causes and give very little to privacy projects.

3

I think donating is more of an emotional thing. When a new release brings a feature I’ve been waiting for, or a developer spends time on Discord explaining some complicated technology, I appreciate that and donate.

It would be delusional to think that a small donation affects a project’s future.

The only exception is when you aren’t donating but are paying for services because they offer a better price than other similar products. In that case, it’s different: it’s not about emotions, but about the devs having a good understanding of the market.

4

The projects may lose funding, developers quit the project, or it’s sold to a company, but I think the best approach is to donate to projects that you would like to continue to exist rather than not donating because of these uncertainties.

5

I can’t speak to the state of Privacy Guides’ finances, but I can say that for The New Oil & Surveillance Report back when I was on that, less than 1-5% of people (depending how you measure and when) donated. If half the people who visit The New Oil donated $1, I could’ve done this fulltime years ago. Same thing with Surveillance Report.

The problem is that a lot of people have the “my one donation doesn’t count for much” attitude, but as the saying goes, “no snowflake believes it is responsible for the avalanche.”

Truthfully, one person donating $5 doesn’t do much. But likewise, one person donating $10,000 is dangerous because now I’m entirely dependent on a single person. However, 10,000 people donating $1 is freaking lifechanging and better because I’m unlikely to lose all of that funding at once for any given reason.

More people need to recognize that you’re part of a collective. At SR we always made a point - especially during hard economic times - of saying “if you have money please sign up for Patreon.” Obviously if you just got laid off or whatever, you need that money. But for the people who do have a few bucks each month you can part with and not miss, being part of that collective action REALLY adds up.

If you have the disposable income, I would strongly urge to donate you to donate the projects you use the most. One thing I’ve heard some people recommend is rotating donations. So this month, donate $5 to OpenWRT. Next month, donate $5 to Session. Next month, donate $5 to Fedora. So on. Like I said, in my opinion you should donate to the ones you use. I don’t use Fedora so I don’t donate (sorry Fedora folks). But in the past I’ve donated to Qubes, Signal, DD-WRT, and other projects I use daily. Ask yourself “which project would I hurt most if they went away?” and donate to them.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Tip your servers.

EDIT: you mentioned the uncertainty of the project going away. Maybe it would help to think of it less like paying for a service subscription and more like splurging on a luxury. When I buy a frappe or a candy bar, it goes away. It doesn’t stay forever. Even the dopamine hit of sugar fades eventually. But also, it’s like $2. Who cares? (For me, at least. I know some people are literally saving every single dollar, but again we’re talking about people with disposable income.) Your donation to a project shouldn’t bankrupt you or keep your kids out of college or prevent your retirement. It should be money you don’t mind losing.

6

On board with everything up to here. American tipping culture is absolutely not comparable to donating to FOSS projects which otherwise wouldn’t be paid at all. Tipping is a cultural psyop by business owners to pay their employees less while making everyone think their products are cheaper than they actually are.

Donating to FOSS projects is based and provides revenue to people who would still be making the world a better place without it, but by donating you make their lives a little easier.

7

Sorry, let me clarify:

“Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Tip your servers” is my joking sign-off after I just wrote a massive wall of text. It’s completely unrelated to the rest of what I wrote.

That’s on me. It’s a joke I make and I did it completely out of habit/didn’t even think about it.

8

I knew it was a joke to some extent but thought it was related to the topic because it’s not entirely dissimilar, and wanted to point that out because I do think it’s important to highlight that distinction. Many people do think of donating to projects like a tip when it’s not.

Didn’t realize that was something you write regularly though. My mistake.

9

People who maintain FOSS should get paid for their jobs, not get donations:

For example, when you pay for Mullvad VPN, you are also supporting FOSS maintainers who are paid by Mullvad benefiting from their job. Commercial products are a pretty good way to earn and distribute money.

10

That’s not necessarily how FOSS works. Many contributors are just doing it in their free time. Obviously yeah if a company is paying someone to be a FOSS contributor they should… receive their paycheck? Was anyone claiming otherwise?

11

Addressing your main question only:

Yes.

12

Well, unless there’s public contract from Mullvad on profit-sharing with those FOSS projects, I’d not jump to such conclusions, because the default setting for a business is to line its own pockets, and marketing is a massive part for facilitating that (for public VPN providers).

Yes. The trickle of donations from individuals I get for a couple of semi-popular FOSS projects I co-develop, play a big part in covering my daily avocado toast and coffee DeepSeek & MiMo & GLM expenses. I truly appreciate it. More also for the fact that, the constant $20/mo to $100/mo sent to my account tells me that the I matter projects matter, inflates my ego, and I keep at the grind (which is actually a far worse outcome for me!).

13

I do not see a reason for the author to lie about his contracts.

14

You made a very generic claim?[1] It is one thing Mullvad, via some sister company, pays Valsorda[2] to maintain a project that was started at Mullvad, and another entirely for Mullvad to auto pay FOSS maintainers their own projects rely upon.

  1. “…when you pay for Mullvad VPN, you are also supporting FOSS maintainers who are paid by Mullvad” ↩︎

  2. Not that it wholly matters, but he has publicly advocated for using Mullvad VPN (ex). ↩︎

15

I never claimed that, nor do I think auto payments should even be a thing (we already pay taxes)

Quite the opposite, actually. I think there aren’t enough examples of this, and it’s good to remind people that we should explore this way of funding open source. Donations, on the other hand, have been tried to death and not a single project can actually survive on them alone.

16

GrapheneOS is funded entirely by donations and it’s working well for them.

17

You mislead when you imply Mullvad pays FOSS maintainers when in fact they’re only paying Valsorda to maintain a project that Mullvad themselves started. Mullvad isn’t going around “paying FOSS maintainers” that are in need. No disrespect, but I’d not be surprised if Valsorda is already financially secure, given his long stints working in BigTech. Theirs is never a good example, from any angle. In fact, it is a misleading one.

Not even a single? Bold claim.

I’m a full time FOSS developer, and I wrote in a comment above just how donations, even if a trickle, help. Corporate sponsorships, if they come with no strings attached, are the best thing since slice bread; but otherwise, they can be a drag on the actual objectives, speaking from personal experience.

Donations aren’t only solicited for survival. Donations from the community acts as a strong singal & adds to motivation/incentive to continue the project. Otoh, no shortage of FOSS projects that refuse donations or sponsorships because their project, in their minds, is a “gift”; they expect nothing in return, nor do they expect that “gift” to be a tiresome commitment.

18

GrapheneOS is funded entirely by donations

It is really great that the Twitter and Ethereum founders are giving six-figure sums to FOSS, but that is not really the same model, not the kind of donations OP mentioned.

upd: btw, Mullvad sponsors GrapheneOS. Hi, @ignoramous

The whole point is not for the model to rely on charity, but to deliver real value to people using FOSS who are willing to pay for it.

Donations aren’t only solicited for survival.

Sure, I get the emotional aspect of donations, that totally makes sense. What does not make sense is thinking about them as a long-term survival plan for FOSS. It is like discussing “are users saying thank you is what keeps FOSS alive”.

19

My point is, paying Mullvad is not the way to do it.

That’s like saying, by paying Google, Meta I’m keeping the lights on the open Telecom infrastructure. Or, by paying Amazon, I’m funding Rust’s development.

There’s no long-term survival without that emotional aspect, or whatever you want to call it.

To be clear, my disagreement isn’t that FOSS can survive just on charity from individuals (though, it can if those individuals are wealthy enough; see: Signal). It is just that pay X to fund Y is flawed. Unless I’m a X loyalist (in which case, I’m biased on what it means to pay X; but otherwise, X will want to corner most of what their customers will pay).

GrapheneOS not in a position to refuse Mullvad’s current bandwidth sponsorship, but I’m not sure if they’ll accept additional sponsorship going forward.

20

Actually, I’d agree — Google does a lot for infrastructure and FOSS; a lot of things wouldn’t exist without it and its ad-based business model.

There’s no long-term survival without that emotional aspect, or whatever you want to call it.

That’s a really interesting point, and I agree — it seems like more and more projects lean on emotional appeal to promote their products. Ente and Proton do this a lot, playing on fear and care.

It feels like a more natural move for companies selling a product with an actual marketing strategy, rather than for pure dev teams or individuals. It looks like FOSS projects are able to exist without a dedicated community and without attention to user emotions until they have to sell something on the market.