>At a personal level, it forces the user to make choices. Making choices is exhausting. Should I donate $1, $10, or $100? Should I donate based on my perception

>At a personal level, it forces the user to make choices. Making choices is exhausting. Should I donate $1, $10, or $100? Should I donate based on my perception of how much each project lacks funds, based on how much value I extract out of the software -which is not easy to quantify anyway- or just send an amount that I wouldn't miss? I can't speak for what society should do, but I adopt a "value for value" mindset. If software saves me time, I drop a donation that is in proportion to the value it has to me. This is sometimes hard to quantify, but as a rough estimate, if it's in a professional capacity, I start my hourly rate multiplied by the time it saved me, and if it's in a personal capacity (think used with hobby work), I start with half my hourly rate multiplied by the time it saved me. You should never feel like you should give more than you can comfortably give. > Should I donate one-time and forget about it or set a recurring donation? If recurring, shouldn't I monitor the project's development to decide if a recurring donation should continue? It depends on the project - often I'll ask the author. Some software is backed with recurring donators, so a one-time donation to help pay for some hardware or software the project needs is the most helpful, but some software is not backed by recurring donations, so a smaller, recurring donation will help sustain the project for longer (especially with hosting bills or other recurring expenses). My number one suggestion to free software authors that accept donations would be to specify whether one-time or recurring donations would be more helpful, and if one-time, if there are specific expenses/amounts that are needed that could have a high impact on the project. > Then would it not be fair to hunt down every single free software project I'm using and evaluate its needs and value in order to donate to that as well? Disabuse yourself of the notion that life is fair. For me, there is certain free software that I use almost constantly (Debian and Emacs, say), and some free software that I use one-off that saves me a large amount of time. Both are examples of projects that I would consider donate to. Something that I use once or twice a month for a short amount of time and has many alternatives I may not donate to.