Question Details

Browse

Do Open Source projects really generate funds from donations??

By Chuck Ben - May. 06, 2008

A whole lot of projects on Sourceforge have a donation button. I support Open Source software but I hate to admit that I've never contributed any funds to a project. I have given $20 to the Obama campaign though! Just wondering if people are actually donating money to Open Source software and if anyone had an estimate of the amount raised through donations across projects and for specific projects


Answers

Add Answer

  1. By Randy Clark on May. 06, 2008

    I am sure they make _some_ money using donations, but I'm sure they don't make bank! I mean, sites like Wikipedia thrive off donations - cash and kind, as does the Apache foundation.


    0 Votes
    Report this

  2. By Mo Sohn on May. 06, 2008

    No. They don't. Even Wikipedia @ 300 million pageviews a day (or something crazy like that) gets $3M a year in donations. So that translates to $0.00000001 in donations per page view. I might have screwed up on the zeros but you get the idea.


    Bottom Line, don't start an open source initiative unless you REALLY love it! :)


    0 Votes
    Report this

  3. By Daylon Jackson on May. 07, 2008

    Donations are CRUCIAL for the open source movement and please read Mayank Sharma's post on the economics of Open Source donations - http://www.packtpub.com/article/the-economics-of-open-source-donations


    0 Votes
    Report this

  4. By an anonymous user on Jun. 24, 2008

    three million still sounds pretty good to me!


    0 Votes
    Report this

  5. By an anonymous user on Jun. 24, 2008

    Doesn't sound so good when the estimated commercial value of Wikipedia is over $3 BILLION!


    0 Votes
    Report this

  6. By an anonymous user on Jun. 24, 2008

    i.e. donations are less than 0.1% of the value of the entity...


    0 Votes
    Report this
Share your knowledge