I've relied on a lot of different projects over the years that have helped me in various different ways and recently had the opportunity to start giving something back.
Running Report URI
We're lucky enough to have Michal Špaček with us on the team at Report URI and it was him who first suggested that we should do something to support the projects we depend on. We were retiring Travis CI and moving over to GitHub Actions for our tests which would free up the cost of our monthly subscription and he suggested we should put it to another use.
This was a great idea so we did exactly that!
Nette Framework
We use the Nette Framework and Tracy Debugger at Report URI so this was a great candidate.
You can see that Michal is listed in the Backers section for his existing personal donation, and I love his sponsor message <script>alert('michalspacek.cz');</script>, and we are now listed in the Generous Backers section as Scott Helme as the donation was made personally by me. This will now remain as an ongoing subscription to support the project.
PHPStan
Another tool that we depend on a lot is our PHP Static Analysis tool, PHPStan. They have multiple ways to Sponsor them but I chose to go through GitHub Sponsors as it's really easy if you already have payment details in GitHub.
Another cool thing about using GitHub Sponsors is that they match donations to some projects and our donation to PHPStan qualifies so they get twice as much! If you look at their BACKERS.md file you can see Michal listed there with his personal donation again and we will soon be listed for ours under my name. You can also view my personal GitHub page where it shows projects you are supporting with GitHub Sponsors.
Ubuntu PHP Packages
We use Ubuntu (Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS x64) on our production servers and PHP (7.3, soon to be 7.4) from the Ubuntu PPA managed by Ondřej Surý. In the Donate on the site there are several ways to contribute and I used PayPal to start a recurring donation.
Let's Encrypt
Whilst we don't use Let's Encrypt much in production as our main site is behind Cloudflare and their free certs with our origin using their Origin CA, we do use Let's encrypt in a few places. Outside of Report URI I also use Let's Encrypt extensively on my PiHole, my Unifi Cloud Key and just about every other project I have!
I started up a monthly donation to Let's Encrypt which is easy to do via their Donation page so we're now happily support them too!
Going forwards
It'd be really great to expand our support for other projects that we use and depend on but also others that benefit the community too. Whilst our contributions have started off small for now, the plan is to gradually increase the amounts we donate and the breadth of projects we donate to. Still though, I'm sure these projects would appreciate small donations compared to no donations and I'd also like to encourage others to do the same. This is something we should have done much sooner and I'm glad that Michal pushed this idea through at Report URI 👍