Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Common Donation Targets

  • Core internet/OSS infrastructure: Internet Archive, Wikipedia, Let’s Encrypt, FSF/FSFE, EFF, Software Freedom Conservancy, Apache, Outreachy, OpenStreetMap, Tor, Debian/Gentoo/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Asahi Linux, KDE, GNOME-like desktops, Syncthing, Homebrew.
  • Everyday tools: Signal, Mastodon, Matrix, Thunderbird, VLC, LibreOffice, Jellyfin, Pi-hole, NewPipe, Magit and other Emacs packages, Anki/AnkiDroid, NVDA, Kiwix, Organic Maps, Bandcamp, KiCAD, Calibre, etc.
  • Developer ecosystems: Zig, Odin, Raylib, PHP Foundation and related tooling, Servo and Ladybird browsers, Godot/Blender/game engines, language communities (Clojure, F#, Gleam, D, Crystal, Play, Django, QubesOS, etc.).

Motivations and Strategies

  • Strong theme: “pay for what I use daily,” especially when it’s a critical dependency or makes money for the donor.
  • Preference for small or one‑person projects and clearly underfunded infrastructure over large, well‑funded foundations.
  • Some maintain personal or corporate “OSS budgets,” or donate when a project “saves them” (e.g., bugfix, critical feature).
  • Others focus on recurring small monthly donations to many projects rather than large one‑offs.

Concerns About Large Organizations

  • Mixed views on Wikipedia and Mozilla: some stop donating, citing perceived overfunding, spending on side projects, or high executive pay; others argue the wider mission justifies support.
  • Debate over the Internet Archive’s aggressive legal risk-taking; some see it as necessary activism, others as reckless for an infrastructure institution.
  • Skepticism about whether certain projects (e.g., Signal, Firefox) actually need or correctly receive donations; clarifications and counterarguments follow.

Views on OSS Sustainability and Business Models

  • Cited work (“Roads and Bridges”) and practitioner experience: commercial open‑core projects often write >95% of code and bear most support costs, while donations alone rarely cover needed staff.
  • Some refuse to contribute code to open‑core companies, preferring pure community projects.
  • Strong dislike of “nagware” fundraising and of projects removing free features to force expensive “pro” tiers.
  • Several argue FOSS should be treated like 80s/90s shareware: if you use it, you should pay.

Non‑Tech and Local Causes

  • Many split giving between digital projects and real‑world needs: food banks, local shelters, animal rescues, medical NGOs, war relief (notably Ukraine and Palestine), digital rights/law groups, UBI pilots, and local hackerspaces and political/rights organizations.
  • Emphasis from some on donating only to tangible, verifiable local efforts; others stress due diligence against charity fraud.

Beyond Money

  • Some prefer contributing time, mentoring, code, documentation, or simply visibility/promotion.
  • Boycotting misaligned services and choosing ethical alternatives is framed as another form of “support.”