Related to a previous post about Thunderbird collecting 6.4 million dollars in 2022 and KDE only 200k, I’m wondering why people do not donate or do not donate more to KDE.

What’s holding you back?

Here’s what I said in that thread

I donate periodically to KDE, but my major gripe is that I don’t know where the money is going. They have no financial reports that can be easily found, individual projects don’t have a donation button, there’s no public tracking of their income or expenditure like on opencollective, and it’s not easy to find KDE devs (aka who is actually on the KDE team) so that one could sponsor individual devs.

Although I trust KDE more than Mozilla (MZ pays their CEO 7 million/year and invests in anything but Firefox, their most known project), I would much much much rather prefer it to know where the money goes.

  • lattrommi
    3·
    5 months ago

    I’m poor (income is ~20% below US poverty line) and only vaguely understand how things work and speak one language. So I have no money, wouldn’t trust my advice to fix things or explain them and translations can be done better with other resources than me. I did try to make wallpapers and icons for a few things but they weren’t professional looking enough to share. As I learn more I hope to contribute more in any way I can, if I’m confident it will help, but for now the best thing for me is to stay out of the way.

    • Bro666@lemmy.kde.socialM
      2·
      5 months ago

      There are many ways of contributing to Free Software with your efforts. That you are seriously considering it is already very much appreciated. Maybe you should think about signing up to one of KDE’s mentorship programs (excuse the bare bones website, it is still work in progress)? These would help you get the foot in the door of contributing with someone to guide you, and even a foot in the door of the IT industry.