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So how do you all decide which #FOSS project(s) to give your limited financial contributions to and how many projects to spread it between?

I feel end user applications with teams get more attention and thus more funding, while the behind the scenes "plumbing" often gets forgotten. I also look for socially important projects without significant funding. That's one reason I've given to #Yunohost before, but there's still so many other projects I'd like to give to that it's hard to decide which!

Tech Cyborg reshared this.

in reply to Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

> there's still so many other projects I'd like to give to that it's hard to decide which!

This is the problem with trying to fund projects by atomised individuals dropping coins in tins. Approaches like Snowdrift;

snowdrift.coop/how-it-works

... or TideLift;

tidelift.com/about/lifter

... have always seemed like a better approach to me. Gathering those funding dribbles into gushers capable of properly funding entire teams, and deciding collectively and strategically who to fund.

#funding

in reply to Strypey

Interesting.

I didn't see anything in #Snowdrift suggesting any strategic guidance as to which projects to fund.

#TideLift looked more promising with analysis of projects based on users and security practices to reward maintainers.

Their announcement that they'd been bought by some security company left me uneasy though. Can #enshittification be far behind? Iy seems like something that would be more effective long-term as a co-operative, foundation or nonprofit.

#FOSS #Funding

This entry was edited (11 months ago)

Tech Cyborg reshared this.

in reply to Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

> I didn't see anything in Snowdrift suggesting any strategic guidance as to which projects to fund

Members of the founding team, such as @wolftune, could explain it much better than me. But I'd say that the information the platform gives you about the collective priorities of everyone using the platform allows for a much more strategic approach than individuals making decisions in isolation.

This entry was edited (11 months ago)
in reply to Strypey

@strypey @wolftune

the strategic guidance we envision about Snowdrift.coop is mostly in a standard-enough way for projects to communicate what their goals and needs are and to have some history to show whether they are using funding well. The priority is to get patrons engaged in making conscious decisions about funding, so they need decent information.

And that means focusing on end-user / downstream projects. Those projects can then fund their own upstream dependencies.