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?

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[–] pescetarian@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Matrix, Deltachat, Nextcloud more then enough, they can not more even with money

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 4 points 5 hours ago

Wikimedia, and wikipedia, also firefox

[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

AntennaPod states this on their website

AntennaPod doesn’t need a lot of money. Our (annual) costs are already covered by our existing donation funds. Therefore, we’d much prefer it if you

donate to your favorite podcast(er), or

help us with a non-monetary contribution.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago

Wikipedia could learn from their decency

[–] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 81 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

Jellyfin has explicitly asked that people find other places to donate to: https://opencollective.com/jellyfin/updates/were-good-seriously

[–] Anivia@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Reading the first lines I was gonna say just cause their operating costs are covered doesn't mean they should refuse more donations, because they could use the money to hire people to fix their garbage software.

But they cleared that up further down where they suggest donating to Jellyfin clients instead, which are indeed the biggest problem at the moment.

Hopefully it will one day become a viable Plex alternative for people that are sharing their server with "normie" users, and not just users that are technologically inclined and willing to use external Android TV boxes instead of hoping their SmartTV has a Jellyfin client available for it that isn't hot garbage

[–] taiidan@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Eh? TV boxes? Just use a web brower. What is a TV box?

[–] beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 minutes ago

Do you not have a TV? I've watched stuff on my monitor, sure, but sitting on the couch watching TV is what the vast majority of people do.

Unless you mean connecting your computer to your TV? I did this for awhile, there are ways to make it work, but I much prefer using a Chromecast or similar device to simplify the whole interaction.

[–] paradox2011@lemmy.ml 20 points 14 hours ago

I do see a mention in that post about instead supporting the jellyfin client developers. They give this page as a reference for who to support based on which client you use.

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 16 points 16 hours ago

Thanks for sharing this.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 1 points 12 hours ago

same with antennapod

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 25 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Maybe I can say Wikipedia because if it’s mediawiki software. Every year they ask for money but a lot of their funds don’t go towards the Wikipedia project.

[–] wargreymon@sh.itjust.works 10 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Their only defence is to support other mediawiki projects, but it is ambiguous we don't know how the money goes. The project, whatever that is, should speak for itself instead of going through Wikipedia.

[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Getting your ideas from Elon I see.

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 0 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Did you even read what I said? Go look where their money goes, it’s mostly for random outreach programs.

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Donations+to+the+Wikimedia+Foundation%2Cour+ecosystem+of+Wikimedia+projects.

58% goes to fundraising, administrative and technological costs. The rest has some money going towards, but no limited to, other programs.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/Wikimedia_Foundation_2024_Audited_Financial_Statements.pdf

Only thing I can find in their financials that would maybe qualify as "random outreach" would be "awards and grants", at 26mil last year out of 185mil revenue, or 14%.

https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund

As far as I can tell, it's not particularly random.

Maybe I'm missing something?

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 0 points 3 hours ago

To me that still shows most doesn’t go where you think, especially when volunteers do the hard work.

[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 17 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

That's a different question.

[–] Apathy@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 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.

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

firefox I guess actually has enough funding

leverage inc should, make it happen...

[–] ComradePedro@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 hours ago

Mozilla is losing the vast majority of its funding soon with the Google antitrust situation