Tech Solvency: Donating to free/libre/FOSS/open-source software and related projects

If you're like me, you want to make some donations to free/libre/open-source projects, but don't know your options.

Free* software donation options - an exhaustive list

TODO: table-ify; add filtering/criteria - license used, payment options (Bitcoin, PayPal, etc.); 501(c)(3) vs 501(c)(6); paid support / alternatives

Software projects - stated as tax-deductible (US):

Apache Software Foundation - http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html
    (Full list: https://projects.apache.org/projects.html)
    ActiveMQ
    Cassandra
    CouchDB
    Hadoop
    HTTP Server ("Apache")
    JMeter
    Lucene
    mod_perl
    OpenOffice
    Solr
    SpamAssassin
    Subversion
    Tomcat / TomEE
Creative Commons - https://donate.creativecommons.org/
Free Software Foundation (FSF) - https://my.fsf.org/donate/
    FSF Europe - https://fsfe.org/?ams=join
FreeBSD Foundation - https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/
Freedom of the Press Foundation - https://freedom.press/
    Signal - https://freedom.press/crowdfunding/signal/
    Encryption tools for journalists - https://freedom.press/crowdfunding/encryption-tools-journalists/
FreedomBox - https://freedomboxfoundation.org/donate/
GNOME Foundation - https://www.gnome.org/friends/
    (Full list: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects)
    GIMP - https://www.gimp.org/donating/
    GNOME
    GTK+
Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) - https://www.isc.org/donate/
    BIND
    DHCP
    NTP - http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Main/DonatingToTheProject
Let's Encrypt - https://letsencrypt.org/donate/
Mozilla - https://donate.mozilla.org/
NetBSD Foundation - https://www.netbsd.org/donations/
Open Source Initiative (OSI) - https://opensource.org/donate
OpenBSD Foundation - http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html
    (Full list: http://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html)
    LibreSSL
    OpenBGPD
    OpenNTPD
    OpenSMTPD
    OpenSSH
OTR - https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/donate.php (University of Waterloo)
Plone - https://plone.org/sponsors
Python Software Foundation - https://www.python.org/psf/donations/
ReactOS - https://www.reactos.org/donating
Software in the Public Interest (SPI) - http://www.spi-inc.org/
    (Full list: http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/)
    Arch Linux - https://www.archlinux.org/donate/
    Debian - https://www.debian.org/donations
    freedesktop.org
    Fluxbox
    GNUstep
    haskell.org
    Jenkins
    LibreOffice - http://donate.libreoffice.org/
    MinGW
    NTPsec - https://www.ntpsec.org/getting-involved.html
    OpenEmbedded
    OpenVAS
    OpenWRT
    PostgreSQL
    Privoxy
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) - https://sfconservancy.org/donate/
    (Full list: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/current/)
    Boost
    Bro
    Buildbot
    BusyBox
    Git
    GPL compliance guidance for Linux developers (copyright holder management)
    Inkspace
    Mercurial
    phpMyAdmin
    PyPy
    QEMU
    Samba
        rsync
    Selenium
    Squeak
    Sugar Labs
    SWIG
    uCLibc
    Wine
Tails - https://tails.boum.org/donate/
Tor - https://donate.torproject.org/
Wikimedia Foundation - https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give

Related organizations, stated as tax-deductible (US): Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - https://supporters.eff.org/donate Hackers for Charity - https://www.hackersforcharity.org/ HeliOS Project - http://www.heliosinitiative.org/help.html Internet Archive - https://archive.org/donate/ Nonprofit Technology Resources - http://ntrweb.org/support-ntr/ Open Source Robotics Foundation - https://events.osrfoundation.org/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fcontribute%2Ftransact&reset=1&id=1 OSU Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) - https://osuosl.org/donate/ OWASP - https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Donate Public Patent Foundation - http://www.pubpat.org/Support.htm SETI@home - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_donate.php Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) - https://www.softwarefreedom.org/donate/

Appear to be explicitly non-tax-deductible (US), donation still possible, sometimes 501(c)(6):

Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.org/donate/
GnuPG / libgcrypt / gpg4win - https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html
Internet Civil Engineering Institute - https://icei.org/donate/ - still working on 501(c)(3) status as of 2018
    Bufferbloat
    NTPsec
Linux Foundation - https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate/ - 501(c)(6)
    (Full list: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects/)
    Open Container Initiative
OpenSSL Foundation - https://www.openssl.org/support/donations.html
    Tizen
    Xen
Manjaro - https://manjaro.org/donate/
Openwall - https://www.openwall.com/donations/
    John the Ripper
R - https://www.r-project.org/foundation/donations.html
TightVNC - http://www.tightvnc.com/donate.html
Varnish - http://phk.freebsd.dk/VML/

Non-profit status outside of the US: Blender - https://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment/ - Dutch public benefit corporation KDE - https://ev.kde.org/donations.php - deductible in Germany Lazurus IDE - https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/How_to_donate_to_Lazarus - in The Netherlands VideoLAN / VLC - http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html - French

Tax status unclear, donation possible: Audacity - https://www.audacityteam.org/donate/ Cacti - https://www.cacti.net/contribute.php Calibre - https://calibre-ebook.com/donate Cygwin - https://cygwin.com/donations.html Drupal - https://www.drupal.org/association/donate jQuery - https://js.foundation/about/donate KeePass - https://keepass.info/donate.html Kodi (formerly XBMC) - https://kodi.tv/contribute/donate Linux Mint - http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php LinuxQuestions.org - https://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/donation.html lm-sensors - http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/AuthorsAndContributors Mageia - https://www.mageia.org/en/donate/ MariaDB Foundation - https://mariadb.org/donate/ Memtest86+ - http://www.memtest.org/#donation nginx - http://nginx.org/en/donation.html OpenVPN - https://www.secure-computing.net/wiki/index.php/OpenVPN/Donations OpenVZ - https://wiki.openvz.org/Donate Perl Foundation - https://donate.perlfoundation.org/ PuTTY - https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-donations Raspbian - https://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianDonate Slackware - original store is defunct and was apparently ripping Patrick off, but you can use his official Cafepress site: https://www.cafepress.com/volkerdi Syncthing - https://syncthing.net/ (bottom of page) SystemRescueCD / fsarchiver - http://www.fsarchiver.org/Donation Ubuntu - http://community.ubuntu.com/help-information/funding/ Valgrind - http://valgrind.org/help/contributing.html Vim - https://www.vim.org/sponsor/ (money goes to charity for children in Uganda) Wordpress - http://wordpressfoundation.org/donate/ Zotero (CHNM at gmu.edu) - https://rrchnm.org/donate/

Direct financial donations don't appear possible, but other options exist: CentOS - https://wiki.centos.org/Donate Fedora - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Donations Nmap - https://nmap.org/nmap_thanksto.html - appears to not accept donations, but you can buy advertising on nmap.org Trisquel - https://trisquel.info/en/donate OpenSUSE - https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2015-02/msg00011.html

Cannot accept donations of any kind:

HandBrake - as of 2016-12-23, no donations are possible. https://handbrake.fr/docs/credits.html.
Previous statement was at https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/SupportFAQ#filthylucre (Internet Archive cache).

Original text: We are honored by your desire to help, but unlike some other open-source projects, we are neither willing nor able to accept material donations of any kind. Too many complications can arise from acceptance of such offers, and we’d rather stand on our own unindebted to others and in good stead than for something unexpected to arise and risk bad blood with our users.

Unknown (let me know if you know!): Bacula (old.bacula.org has a page, but new site does not list methods) - maybe incorporated now? memcached - No formal structure. Sometimes people buy dormando dinner and a beverage. :) (2016-12) Open Invention Network OpenIndiana sudo

Other places to get ideas: Authors of your favorite browser plugins Amazon Wish Lists of developers Bountysource Check for donation page on SourceForge / GitHub / etc. DistroWatch LiveCD List Lots of Linux Links' Advocacy page Patreon Purchase commercial support from an otherwise FLOSS project Russ Albery's Charities and Non-Profits list

Tech Solvency / Donating to free-software projects

Free* software donation options - an exhaustive list