Gentoo Made Progress In 2023 On Binary Packages, Modern C & Reviving DEC Alpha Support

[mazumoto]

Oh wow. They raised 18.5k$ last year and got around 100k$ in their bank account? That's basically ... nothing
I rely on them for years now, didn't know they were so badly funded. Amazing what they pull off with so little money. Seems like the whole distribution is really built on volunteers shoulders, even though others rely on it (ClearLinux from intel I believe and a few others?).
I really should gift them a few bucks, even if it's just a drop on the hot stone ...

[Party0445]

Sounds like a smart guy if he knows how to maintain that kind of stuff, he should focus on something more important.

more important to you. Ftfy.

[RealNC]

"revived support for the DEC Alpha architecture" ... but why??

Because some Gentoo devs use it. This isn't any different from the kernel itself, really. Many of the supported systems are only dropped once the maintainer(s) that actually use it retire. If nobody else steps up, they are deprecated and then removed.

[maffblaster]

Oh wow. They raised 18.5k$ last year and got around 100k$ in their bank account? That's basically ... nothing
I rely on them for years now, didn't know they were so badly funded. Amazing what they pull off with so little money. Seems like the whole distribution is really built on volunteers shoulders, even though others rely on it (ClearLinux from intel I believe and a few others?).
I really should gift them a few bucks, even if it's just a drop on the hot stone ...

Coming from an existing Gentoo developer, this is correct. We're 100% volunteer maintained and funded. We do have "Sponsors" who volunteer file hosting and mirroring for our distribution infrastructure and Google usually accepts us for their Google Summer of Code effort, which can be considered a form of funding/support. That said, as far as I know, exactly zero of our developers get paid by the Gentoo Foundation. As developer, the only ways which I am aware for us to be monetarily compensated for our efforts to maintain Gentoo are:

1. The developer sets up a Patreon, GitHub Sponsor, or similar for consumers of our work to donate to their efforts.
2. The developer is actively employed by a organization that utilizes Gentoo in their internal environment and they allow their employees to 'contribute back' by spending some of their time developing Gentoo. Some of the companies that have historically allowed this are Google, Sony, and a few others. Not sure how many developer still tick this bucket, but they are far and few between.

The best time to start donating to useful software was when you started using it. The second best time is today.

[cj.wijtmans]

Sadly gentoo only allows donation through paypal.