122 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
122 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
title: 'How we started to donate to Open Source at work'
|
|
taxonomy:
|
|
tag:
|
|
- work
|
|
- freesoftware
|
|
- donations
|
|
content:
|
|
items:
|
|
- '@self.children'
|
|
limit: 5
|
|
order:
|
|
by: date
|
|
dir: desc
|
|
pagination: true
|
|
url_taxonomy_filters: true
|
|
published: false
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# How we started to donate to Open Source at work
|
|
|
|
## Pitching the idea
|
|
|
|
As you might have seen in the news, there have been a lot of articles over the
|
|
years that Open Source software doesn't receive enough support, especially
|
|
financially.
|
|
|
|
At my employer [Contria GmbH](https://www.contria.ch) we use a lot of Open Source software:
|
|
|
|
- Ubuntu as the base OS for our VMs
|
|
- Ansible to deploy the VMs
|
|
- Nginx, PHP and MariaDB to run the applications
|
|
- Vagrant and Virtualbox to set up a development environment
|
|
|
|
To just name a few and as well some tools provided by individuals for free. For
|
|
example digwebinterface.com.
|
|
|
|
I would consider myself a Free Software enthusiast and read a lot of those
|
|
articles mentioned above. So a few years ago I decided, I would try and ask if
|
|
Contria would be willing to donate to the various Open Source projects we use
|
|
to build and run our products.
|
|
|
|
When I spoke with the manager of the company about it, I wasn't actually met
|
|
with a lot of resistance. I mentioned the problems a lot of Open Source
|
|
projects had with funding and asked if we as Contria might be wiling to do
|
|
something in this regard. He quickly saw the reasoning behind the idea and was
|
|
willing to continue with the project.
|
|
|
|
> **Just like that?** \
|
|
> _Yes just like that. Personally I expected more resistance and hope that it
|
|
> will be this easy for everyone who tries to do something similar._
|
|
|
|
## Getting started
|
|
|
|
After the initial pitch it took a few years before we actually started with the
|
|
project. But in 2021 I was able to officially dedicate some of my time to the
|
|
project.
|
|
|
|
I started to create a short list with software and projects we used and seemed
|
|
worth to donate to. I focused mainly on non-profit organisations and
|
|
individuals. For example, while we use Ubuntu it makes more sense to me to
|
|
donate to Debian. Ubuntu is based on Debian and Canonical, the company behind
|
|
Ubuntu, is already profitable.
|
|
|
|
In addition to the larger and more system related projects, I would like to
|
|
start curating a list of essential packages we use in our products. We're not
|
|
quite there yet, but I expect this to be something to grow each year anyway.
|
|
|
|
After I created the list I assigned a percentage to each project. Currently,
|
|
these are just 5 and 10%. Roughly weighed by importance to us and a bit by the
|
|
size of the project. I did it this way so that the distribution wasn't based on
|
|
the budget because when I created the list I didn't know yet how much money I
|
|
was able to spend. It then turned out that the budget would be a **few
|
|
thousand** Swiss Francs, I could freely allocate.
|
|
|
|
> **That doesn't sound like much for a Swiss company with over 20 employees.** \
|
|
> _Compared to the licenses we pay for proprietary software it's indeed not
|
|
> that much. But then again, it's still a substantial amount and I'm quite
|
|
> happy with it. Who knows maybe it will grow in the future._
|
|
|
|
Last year we had about 40% left which I didn't allocate to a specific project.
|
|
We didn't just want to keep the money and were sure that there were very
|
|
important but "hidden" projects we didn't think of. Think OpenSSL for example
|
|
which was one of the most prominent examples in recent years. \
|
|
We first thought about giving the money to the FSFE or a similar foundation. A
|
|
lot of them do a very good job, but we felt that some of them might be a bit too
|
|
political for a company to donate to.
|
|
We then found the [Open Source Collective](https://www.oscollective.org/) which was exactly what we were
|
|
looking for. Projects can apply for funding at the Open Source Collective, and
|
|
they would then distribute the donations between the projects. So any leftover
|
|
budget we have goes fully to the Open Source Collective now.
|
|
|
|
## Problems when donating
|
|
|
|
For most projects it was very easy to donate to. Especially when they are on
|
|
[opencollective.com](https://opencollective.com). Donating through PayPal works as well, but we prefer
|
|
Open Collective.
|
|
|
|
Some projects have regular bank accounts which you can donate to, for some this
|
|
worked well but was more involved for us because I would have to go through the
|
|
financial department. In the case of the Drupal foundation we weren't able to
|
|
donate at all because something was wrong with the address of their bank.
|
|
Luckily they are now on Open Collective.
|
|
|
|
One project we quite like and use a lot didn't collect its donation, and it
|
|
looks like the project might have become unmaintained. I'm not sure yet of we
|
|
donate to it again this year. I really appreciate the work but if the money
|
|
doesn't get used we probably give it better to a project that does use it.
|
|
|
|
## Final thoughts
|
|
|
|
I'm very happy with the outcome of our donating project. I feel that the
|
|
amount we donate is sustainable, and it shows that we as a company care about
|
|
these projects. \
|
|
Since it's my employer I'm writing here about I can't make any predictions, but
|
|
I will keep advocating for the use and support of Open Source and especially
|
|
Free Software inside our company.
|
|
|
|
For other people that think their employer might be able to contribute to Open
|
|
Source projects, I can give the following advice: \
|
|
The main reason why we didn't do it before, was that we didn't have someone who
|
|
carried the idea forward. So go ahead and give it a try :). |