I'm sometimes surprised at how much most FOSS projects -- including prominent ones with large user bases -- struggle for money, test hardware, hosting and even

I'm sometimes surprised at how much most FOSS projects -- including prominent ones with large user bases -- struggle for money, test hardware, hosting and even manpower. Look at The GIMP for instance. Just a small band of developers doing their best to release a free image editor that people have incredibly high expectations from. How much money, hardware and manpower does the team working on Photoshop have? Open source projects deserve our money more than some random platformer game on Kickstarter. Truth is, though, that most FOSS projects do not actively solicit donations, or seem to not know how to do so. People are more inclined to donate when you tell them that their donations will be used to pay 3 developers who will implement features A, B, C and D and make a new release in X months. Nobody will click that small donate button tucked away in the corner of your project website. Nobody will donate when you tell them "financial help is needed for many different reasons", quoting from the GIMP website. This move from Google is a perfect example of how donations should ideally work. The developers mentioned a concrete problem the project was facing, Google stepped up and donated enough money to solve that particular problem. Nothing more, nothing less.