5 Open Source Projects You Should Donate To

The success of open source has an impact on the daily lives of people in so many ways its impossible to explain in one blog post but lets just say for those of you who think you have never used open source in reality you use it every time you go online. Now don’t you want to support the projects and people who are pushing innovation that turns into the technology you use on a daily basis?

Below I have listed my top five picks for open source projects you should absolutely consider making a donation to and the best thing is for some of the projects you can write off the donation as a charitable contribution (if you are American).

Oregon State University Open Source Labs

Oregon State University Open Source Labs (OSU OSL) is where some of the largest and most popular open source projects receive their web hosting and other vital web services that allow them to operate. OSU OSL hosts servers for Kernel.org, Apache Software Foundation, CentOS and Fedora just to name a few.

Donate to OSU OSL

The Ada Initiative

The Ada Initiative is an organization dedicated to advancing women in open source software, open data and open culture. The Ada Initiative hosts a number of events such as AdaCamp to move towards their goals.

Donate to The Ada Initiative

Yorba

Yorba is the community and organization behind the Shotwell Photo Organizer used by many Linux Distros and the Geary email reader.

Donate to Yorba

Apache Software Foundation 

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has been around since 1999 and was a spin off of the Apache Group that was tasked with creating the Apache HTTP server. ASF is dedicated to supporting open source projects through supplying hardware, communications and other assets.

Donate to the ASF

Debian

Debian is an association of individuals who have made a common cause to create a free operating system also named Debian. The Debian Operating System is used on Desktop Computers and Servers worldwide and has also been used as an inspiration for other Linux distros such as the ever popular Ubuntu.

Donate to Debian

Notably there are plenty of open source projects and good causes out there to donate your money to and many of them deserve donations to but unfortunately it would be impossible to list them all in one blog post.