I haven’t financially supported project or developers, but I have supported fediverse streamers financially. That way they can support their infrastructure. I try to bug hunt it suggest improvement for foss projects since it helps improve and let maintainers and developers improve their projects

KDE because I liked it when I used it and wanted it to get even better. And Lichess because it’s what I wish all free services were like. I should do more.

Mastodon project and my local mastodon instance

Because I find them useful.
And also I never pay for paid software (at least not directly).

Linux Mint 
Manjaro 
Tor Project 
The Document Foundation (LibreOffice) 
Arch Linux 
KDE 
Mozilla 
F-Droid 
Termux 
db0 Lemmy instance (lemmy.dbzer0.com) 
Arne Schwabe (dev of Android OVPN client) 
Deluan Quintao (dev of Navidrome server) 
Arty Bishop (dev of Look4Sat) 
sc07 (Fediverse Canvas creator) 
Markus Fisch (dev of Binary Eye) 
VideoLAN 
Meshtastic 
Kiwix 
FFmpeg 
IzzyOnDroid 
Lemmy   

Lichess because I use it a lot and it’s my favourite website.

It’s not very frequent, but I usually give money to Jami and to Lemmy.

I only began to support KDE yearly atm

I support KDE, Mozilla and a fediverse instance currently. A small amount to each, each month, but it is worth it to me. I pay for VPN, email, and password manager, so contributing to KDE, Mozilla and the fediverse feels just like another small set of subscriptions.

I’m lucky I can afford to do this; I think any financial contribution of any size is appreciated by the FOSS world.

EDIT: In terms of things I’m thinking of - Jellyfin and maybe Piefed. Mozilla is a bit of a question mark for me with the AI stuff; but I still value Firefox immensely.

I financially support Patrick Volkerding, because his original business model (selling physical installation media) collapsed, the online shop he partnered with to sell merchandise fucked him over and he was forced to move back home to Minnesota for financial reasons. Yet he still keeps hanging on and maintaining one of the most unique Linux distros that exist, and the only one I vibe with.

I’ve always donated to Signal, Bitwarden, and KDE. Lemmy got added to the list this year, plus I always try to support a quality project that’s between a rock and a hard place. I gave to the Oregon State University open source lab this year when I heard about their struggles. They’re why Mozilla is a thing along with many other foundational components of the open internet.

Which open source projects have large expenses? Buying the creator a coffee is nice, but if money is actually required for something to exist I’d rather give there.

Right now I’m extremely poor, but maybe someday I’ll be in the same boat as OP. My Lemmy instance and Tor come to mind, and then maybe Wikipedia, although I know their aggressive fundraising has already worked.

Edit: Oh shit, the Invidious instance I use should probably go first.

Just signal for now

I find it important to support projects that contribute to the greater free software ecosystem. I pick projects I benefit from and whose continued existence I am invested in, despite any faults.

• The NetBSD Project
• The Free Software Foundation (FSF)
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
• The SDF plan9front server
• Project Gutenberg
• Standard Ebooks
• The Internet Archive (IA)
• The Wikimedia Foundation

It ain’t much, but so far this year I donated to Disroot and Signal.

None. Because I’m skint.