• yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    4·
    1 hour ago

    I haven’t counted but it’s more than 10 for sure. Kinda hard to calculate the proprietary software since I pay for it yearly but it’s more than the open source for sure. Usually don’t buy games but when I do, I try to spend at most 10 bucks per game

  • Cptn_Slow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 hour ago

    Per month, zero.

    After a few donations that eventually turned into mandatory subscriptions I only pay for finished products now.

    I’m not paying you to beta test your project for you!

  • kalipixel@reddthat.com
    2·
    1 hour ago

    At least a couple of dollars one time donation if I used the software for some time. If it is very useful software for me I donate more often. I try to avoid proprietary software for ideological reasons, so can’t really compare for this reason.

  • InfiniteHench@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 hours ago

    This might be kinda long, not sure if it’s what you’re looking for. But here goes.

    For the last 20 years I have been largely in the Apple ecosystem and enjoy paying for good software whether closed or OSS. Started the career I have today thanks to the indie Apple software scene and the iPhone’s launch. I probably have more app licenses and subscriptions than your average person, I suspect largely for closed source apps (Things 3, Ivory for Mastodon, Affinity Photo/Designer suite, Procreate, Pixaki, etc.). I despise ads, so I also pay for things like Apple Music, YouTube Premium, and even Twitch Turbo because I use the hell out of YouTube (and Twitch to a lesser extent).

    I’m also a gamer and I’ve moved from Xbox, to PlayStation, and now 100% on PC, Steam, and Steam Deck. Have bought plenty of games, DLCs, and IAPs for stuff like cosmetics. I know, I’m the worst.

    Since I got serious on Mastodon in 2019, I have started seeking out OSS for certain things. I donate small amounts monthly to both the main Mastodon project and to the two instances I use (toot.cafe and mstdn.games). I just started donating a couple bucks monthly to the Lemmy.world Ko-Fi, which I believe supports their other projects (which I haven’t started using).

    Edit: I pay Masto $20/year and I think $1/month to each of the instances.

    While I have gotten angrier about the state of where tech and even Apple have started going, I’m not sure if a Linux PC and home-brewing my own kernels and writing all my own apps is anywhere in my future (yes, I know Steam Deck is Linux). I might be open to exploring a Linux PC eventually, but I’m also at a tricky point in my life where I need to find a new career path sooner than later, and tossing a full platform shift into the mix would, pragmatically, do more harm than good. But I have definitely started leaning more socialist in my politics and personal preferences for supporting communities and software. I’m donating where I can.

  • Curious Canid@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    I don’t play computer games and I rarely buy commercial software of any other kind. The majority of my computer time is spent using FOSS applications. I try to give at least a few dollars every month toward each tool that I use on a regular basis. Among other things, I contribute to Lemmy, Voyager, and the Lemmy.Ca site. Overall it amounts to supporting more than a dozen projects for a total of around $50 per month.

    I wish I could afford to do more, but I try to do what I can. Some projects are part-time and some make up the primary income for the developers. All of them are contributing their time without demanding payment to make our lives better. They deserve our support, in whatever form we can give it.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
    8·
    3 hours ago

    I have been writing OSS for so long, and I know for a fact some of it is widely used (one is a standard library for a popular language) that I figure I’m about even.

    We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and I pay my dues by contributing. I figure folks who take the time to regularly write good, detailed, useful bug reports have, too. I’ve had people contribute translations; those count! I’ve had people submit PRs that were just spelling corrections in readmes - anybody who’s contributing to whatever their ability is counts. I can’t write C well anymore, and on some projects the best I can do is track something down to where I think the issue is; IME, that can cut a big fix effort down to a fraction of the time, if the submitter is right. And, of course, actual PRs that fix bugs are the best.

    New feature PRs - I’m really guilty about submitting those, but they’re a mixed bag. They’re a lot of work for the maintainer, not least of which is the decision of whether they want it.

    Anyway, there are more ways of contributing besides money, even for non-developers.

    For myself, I’d rather have effort contributions than money contributions. Again, this is just me, but money brings with it a sense of obligation, and obligation takes the fun out of projects. That’s just a job, with less stability.

    I do, occasionally, contribute to projects that solicit contributions - projects with maintainers who’ve faithfully been maintaining a project with regular releases for years - projects like Calibre. But in general, odds are not bad that ant given developer has used at least one of my projects at some point: in the entire Linux ecosystem, so many of us are using free software someone wrote without compensation, and it just feels a bit unfair that only some people benefit financially while the vast majority of OSS contributors receive nothing.

  • andrewta@lemmy.world
    7·
    3 hours ago

    There are a few projects I’ve wanted to donate to. Literally couldn’t figure out how in most of them. There was another one that they were asking for way too much information for me to simply donate some money.

    So total sum, so far is zero dollars.

  • 0x01@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 hours ago

    It probably evens out to ~$20 usd/month between recurring donations and one time random donations to the internet archive, wikipedia and some specific open source contributors. Gaming for me is usually 1-2 new games a year so likely similar in cost.

    I donate $5/month to lemmy, and am considering doing more for the other important projects out there.

    The open source community is one of the most important anchors in our modern society, not only do we as every day people benefit, but communities like npm, gradle, pip, etc all benefit the financial system greatly. We do not do enough.