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Michael Tharrington
Michael Tharrington

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Ever donate to a developer who created something you like?

I think it's easy to take for granted that the web and all of its wonderful applications are built by people and a lot of is accessible for free. 🙌

Often, the folks that develop apps and publish websites on the internet aren't asking for any money from the folks using their creations. And frequently, devs that create this stuff aren't obviously attached to their creation. Yet they work away in the background adding new features, keeping things up-to-date, and making sure everything works smoothly for the rest of us.

So, my question to you all is have you ever donated to a developer who created something you like? Who are they? What is it that you like that they created?

Alternatively, have you ever gone with the donation model for any of your creations? Did you receive any donations?

Top comments (28)

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wesen profile image
Manuel Odendahl

Yes! Github's tip feature and patreon are great. Someone saves me a million hours of pain at my dayjob the least I can do is pay them a coffee.

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Michael Tharrington

Totally agree! ☕️

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Haroun Hajem

Will have to do that. I've mostly paid for freeware with donate button if i like the product.

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Michael Tharrington

I recently donated to the creator of myNoise. I use this site every night as a white noise machine for when I'm trying to sleep and it's amazing.

The other day I noticed a donation section of their site and decided I wanted to give them a little something. They wrote me back and were super thankful + incredibly friendly!

It was just a nice reminder that there are lots of cool people out there creating interesting things and giving them away to the world without expecting anything in return. 🙂

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Mary Olive

For sure! I love this project, too, and feel absolutely no friction donating to its further progress. It makes me feel great, actually. :))

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Jason C. McDonald

Yes, I love myNoise! I've donated to that project too.

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Michael Tharrington

Wooohooo! Glad to hear you're a fan as well, Jason. 🙌

Such soothing sounds. 😌

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Haroun Hajem • Edited

I was a paid customer after using it once. I got hoooked! I found it so aiding in my work so i had to donate.

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Fernando

I've used GitHub's sponsor feature for a couple small donations since it came out.

The donation I will always remember (fondly - without any regrets 😆) was in early 2016 or so, when I tipped something like 0.1 or 0.2 BTC to the creator of cyberciti.biz because of a couple of tutorials that saved my butt at my job of the time. Back then I'm sure it was less than $50 and the creator no longer accepts crypto tips, but it's always funny (to me) to look back at that tip.

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Thomas Bnt ☕

Yes of course! Most of my donation is on GitHub Sponsors, for discord.js (a Node module to create Discord bots), for Nuxt.js and recently again for Pi-hole ✨💚

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Keff

Yup, I use a DNI/NIE generator almost daily at work, and decided to donate a bit to the project from my own money! He turned out to be from quite near where I live. That's the only time though...

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Phil Ashby

Yep! The excellent Ismael Martinez teams-for-linux project, that made Teams actually work on my Debian desktop, and I'm still using it as the official Microsoft client has many UX issues..

I also make monthly donations to the Internet Archive, as there is nothing quite so annoying as losing information to the void!

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Jan Peterka

I am planning to donate to packages when I create anything that makes me money. For now I'm creating open-source projects, so hopefully I'm adding some value this way (including reporting bugs and helping other users in issues).

Other than that, I remember buying coffee for OLauncher

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Kevin Peckham

For sure. I contribute monthly to the team that maintains Pug.js among others. They help me do I what do so I believe in paying it forward.

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Aayush Gupta

I do donate as well since I started earning. Its limited but I like to support the work if I find myself using it all the time, and specially if its FOSS.

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pO0q 🦄 • Edited

multiple times! Their software saved me a lot of time. The least I can do is to donate something. I'm usually generous when the code works like a charm, no bug, great documentation.

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Maddy

I do. As a blogger myself, I understand and appreciate the work it takes to create something that helps other people.

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Bernd Wechner

Yep.

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Dhravya

If I would have the capability, I certainly would! With the new GitHub sponsors feature is so easy to help Developers

and people do help, I already have one GitHub sponsor!!

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Ben Sinclair

Yes, though not that often. The last time I did the "buy me a coffee" type donation was for dopamine, a free music player.

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Andrew Baisden

Well yeah sure if you count buying GumRoad courses as donating then yes I have done it 😇

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Michael Tharrington

Haha! Oh that def counts in my book.