TL;DR: We’re donating 3% of our revenue to fund important open source projects

Open source software is critical to our lives, as the internet relies heavily on projects built by legions of good-willed developers. In business, over 78% of companies utilize open source in their organization. However, most companies see open source software as a simple cost reduction - get software functionality without spending money on development. Sadly this ignores the countless humans who dedicate their time and energy to maintain and grow these projects. Not only is this unsustainable in the long run, but it diminishes the great work of these open source developers.

Our team at Eventbot think it’s critically important to support open source and more specifically, the people who make it all possible. So we’ve decided to dedicate 3% of our revenue into the open source projects we rely on. This is a bit of an experiment, as we are a small startup but we feel it’s important to set an example and help the teams that are contributing to our own success. Among the open source projects we’re donating to, we’re big fans of Node-Postgres, GulpJS, Nearley, and Full Calendar. These projects provide a significant value to us, enabling us to deliver Eventbot to our users around the world. Plus, we just felt like these projects were could really use more financial support. Our plan is re-evaluate our contributions every 6 months to increase the dollars we contribute and review new projects we might be using internally.

Most people who use Eventbot will never know about what open source projects are used to deliver their service, and that’s fine. But we can do our part to ensure these project maintainers get some financial assistance and recognition for their efforts. In the long run, we hope the software industry find a more long term approach to open source funding, because donations can only go so far. But until then - we stand on the shoulders of giants who’ve come before us so we gladly contribute to a more sustainable open source future.

Do you have a favorite open source project that needs additional support? Let us know! We’d love to hear from you! 💌 Follow the discussion on Hacker News.

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