We'd like to announce that postmarketOS is now accepting donations on Open Collective!
This is a big change for us; until now we've accepted donations but have largely discouraged them because frankly we've had little use for them. We thought it was somewhat pointless to ask folks for donations and have the money sitting around waiting for something to happen with it...
But times are changing! And we now have some pretty good reasons for accepting donations!
What has changed?
postmarketOS now has one developer working full-time (our very own craftyguy), with the likelihood that more will join in the future. Donations will be used to pay developers for their work, and it will have a direct impact on how fast postmarketOS development can go.
Our testing team is excellent, and we would like to support them further by designing new infastructure for automated testing/CI on real devices that folks want to use with postmarketOS. Donations will be used to pay for this new infrastructure and its ongoing maintenance.
"Hackathons", where we bring postmarketOS developers from all over to one physical location to work on postmarketOS together, have been extremely valuable for accelerating postmarketOS development. Donations will be used to fund these events and associated travel costs.
Why Open Collective?
All contributions and expenses are public on Open Collective, so our finances are completely transparent. Anyone at any time can see how we are funded and what we are spending money on.
Our fiscal host on the platform is Open Collective Europe. We chose them because we believe their values/goals are closely aligned with ours and they have experience hosting other established free software project. Open Collective Europe allows us to operate as a non-profit organization (NPO) and frees up some of our time from having to manage finances.
Going forward, this is the preferred way to contribute financially to postmarketOS.
We'd also like to extend a big thank you to NLnet, our previous fiscal host, for their many years of service!
As postmarketOS continues to grow, we must adapt to enable ourselves to scale up both as a stabilising distribution, and as a community of users and developers who want to actually own the hardware they paid for. By donating to us, you contribute to our long term sustainability and help us prove that "free" software doesn't have to come with a catch.
Please consider donating on our Open Collective page if you can, your help is greatly appreciated!