I try and donate where I can, but stuff like Signal, that refuses to employ engineers outside of the US because “talent doesn’t exist anywhere else” is where I draw the line. Yes, opensource donations are amazing, but not for projects with attitudes like that.
No-one deserves your donations, but that sounds like you’re letting perfect get in the way of good. There are tons of things that speak for Signal. They made the whisper protocol and they consistently protect privacy where they can. I’ve used it for years (meaning I’ve actively generated costs for them without any revenue), and that qualifies as good for me.
I donate at least 1k a year to opensource. There is no shortage of good opensource projects deserving donations; good in the sense of quality and those that fit into my worldview.
I’m a fierce believer in remunerating opensource and of way stronger political opinions. What I won’t donate to, is this idea that the US is the only place on the planet where skilled workers exist that can do this type of work. Orgs believing in US execeptionalism are great. Go be exceptional, just without my money. They won’t miss it.
Is that really the case? I work for a multi national FLOSS organisation but every additional country you want to hire from requires additional compliance overhead so in practice we generally hire from countries where we already have the legal setup to employee people.
I’d have to find their blog post again where they reveal their financials. IIRC it was 50 staff and each was earning half a million or something on average. Maybe I read or remember it wrong but the blog post or comments by Signal staff (maybe even the CEO?) were quite elitist regarding their reasons for hiring US staff or staff living in the US only.
What the true reasons are I dont know. Maybe indeed multinational hiring is just too complicated, who knows, but the way the responses were worded were maybe unfortunate, but at revealing for me.
yeah you really have to be careful sometimes when you want to donate within the FOSS community. Like Hyprland or Kitty. I wouldn’t give those dudes a dime.
I try and donate where I can, but stuff like Signal, that refuses to employ engineers outside of the US because “talent doesn’t exist anywhere else” is where I draw the line. Yes, opensource donations are amazing, but not for projects with attitudes like that.
No-one deserves your donations, but that sounds like you’re letting perfect get in the way of good. There are tons of things that speak for Signal. They made the whisper protocol and they consistently protect privacy where they can. I’ve used it for years (meaning I’ve actively generated costs for them without any revenue), and that qualifies as good for me.
I donate at least 1k a year to opensource. There is no shortage of good opensource projects deserving donations; good in the sense of quality and those that fit into my worldview.
I’m a fierce believer in remunerating opensource and of way stronger political opinions. What I won’t donate to, is this idea that the US is the only place on the planet where skilled workers exist that can do this type of work. Orgs believing in US execeptionalism are great. Go be exceptional, just without my money. They won’t miss it.
Whoa, that’s so toxic. I’m glad I switched my donation to Delta. Plus it just feels so much better to use.
I don’t have evidence for this but Signal feels just like an app right before it’s sold off to a megacorp. I can’t put my finger on it…
Is that really the case? I work for a multi national FLOSS organisation but every additional country you want to hire from requires additional compliance overhead so in practice we generally hire from countries where we already have the legal setup to employee people.
How big an org is Signal?
I’d have to find their blog post again where they reveal their financials. IIRC it was 50 staff and each was earning half a million or something on average. Maybe I read or remember it wrong but the blog post or comments by Signal staff (maybe even the CEO?) were quite elitist regarding their reasons for hiring US staff or staff living in the US only.
What the true reasons are I dont know. Maybe indeed multinational hiring is just too complicated, who knows, but the way the responses were worded were maybe unfortunate, but at revealing for me.
That’s a strange way to say that you just made everything up in your previous post.
yeah you really have to be careful sometimes when you want to donate within the FOSS community. Like Hyprland or Kitty. I wouldn’t give those dudes a dime.