I consider myself a pretty chill and calm person, I can endure and tolerate quite a lot, but I become furious when a program spits in my face with what I didn't ask for, take me for a dumbass or exploit legacy vulnurabilities of my brain. Annoying notification, algorithmic feeds and recommendations, unasked advices and tutorials, stolen out of my pocket data and attention. If I observe such behaviors from a person, I will politely ask them to fuck off at very least. I wouldn't tolerate it from a human, and I definitely won't let it slide from a program.

The computer (laptop/phone/ereader) is mine. Programs I run on them are my tools. They are here to ultimately serve me, not the enterpreneurs, goverments, corporations or whoever what. There is no room for discussion here, there is no "an alternative good opinion". Keep your hands and noses out of my stuff.

You might reasonably ask: "Andrew, if the program is ethical, respectful and doesn't fuck around with you, how people behind it will get a profit?". That's a good question, and I have some thoughts on it.

First of all, there is a hidden assumption that all things should always grow and bring profits. It's not true, a lot of cool things will become much better if they stay at the certain size and just become sustainable (bring enough money, joy and other resources) for their authors and maintainers and keep serving their users. Moreover, in many cases, things built around profit or endless growth simply exploit the planet's resources and vulnerable people under the hood and never become actually sustainable.

Nevertheless, I don't deny that getting money for creating and maintaining software is important. One can of course go quite far on a pure enthusiasm and joy from a positive feedback, but it won't bring food to the table. And even when you make software living in the forest you still need some funds.

Respectful software is almost always also a Free and Open Source Software. The free as in a freedom of course, but also free as in a free beer. The irony here is that monetizing free programs in ethical way is exceptionally hard. Two primary options are grants and donations. There a few more, but they work only for a particular types of software. Donations can be a quite sustainable source of income for the project. So, don't understimate the impact of a small (preferably recurring) donations. It makes day and night for developers.

The bottom line is: we have to normalize paying for a respectful software that we obtain for free. Not because we have to, but because it respects us and we want express the respect and appreciation to its authors and maintainers.

My list

There are a few projects that I rely on daily, they are respectful AF to me, but I hadn't had a chance to express my gratitude with a cold hard cash to some of their creators yet, so today I fix it. I don't recommend you to follow my list, I just want to give you a bit of inspiration and food for thought.

Operating systems

The fundamental part of any non-trivial electronic devices, the place where computing starts.

  • GNU Guix (donate) :: my primary and only OS on the laptop is based on guix functional package manager. I spend most of the day with it, I do most of the work with it. No question it's a crucial part of my life. No question the package manager is one of the most important pieces of any computing, the foundation for reliable and trustworthy supply chain. The primary repo contains only FOSS, it's not a guarantee on its own, but together with the work of the community it gives a reasonable amount of confidence and piece of mind. And I didn't even started to talk about all the goodies like declarative OS configuration, transactional updates/rollbacks, lisp all over the places and much more.

  • GrapheneOS (donate) :: it's my phone's OS based on AOSP. Hardened, minimalistic, zero crapware OOB, good sandboxing, granular capabilities/scopes/permissions to restrict untrusted applications. I don't like phones, I don't like to use them, I hate most of the mobile apps, but graphene makes the experience at least manageable and provides some security and privacy to the crappy mobile phone world.

  • F-droid (donate) :: my go to Android App Repository. Free and Open Source Mobile Software Distribution Ecosystem. We already talked about supply chain for desktop/server OS, now let's cover a mobile devices counterpart. F-droid is an app itself, the app for obtaining and distributing other apps. It's also an app repository. It's a set of tools for creating own packages and repositories. It's user's freedom and privacy first project. It's hard to underestimate how important program distribution is, right? So, this was an obvious pick.

  • CrossInk (sponsor) :: a fork of CrossPoint, a simple and efficient OS for esp32-based E-ink readers. I have a luxury and luck to spend more time on my ultralight E-reader rather than on my phone, and I enjoy every minute using it thanks to CrossPoint. KOreader sync, calibre integration, WebUI for uploading books over the air. CrossInk adds some missing features like control remapping, good OOB fonts, reading stats and IMHO improves the UX significantly.

  • KOreader (support) :: it's not exactly OS, it's more of a reading application, but it works as a graphical shell, file browser, bookmark manager, dictionary and much more. Basically it's only user facing program on my ereader, almost pid 1.

Content and Social Networks

The programs are usually fun and useful, but some (or many of them) can't go far without a content and a way to exchange it (being it audio, video, text or whatever).

  • Anna's Archive (donate) :: The Biggest Library in the world, the project for preserving human knowledge and culture and making it accessible to everyone. Everytime I need a book or scientific paper, I reach for it. The code and datasets are open source. Books can be fun and entertaining, but books also a foundation of our civilization. If book brought you a joy or was helpful, donate to author of the book and write them a letter of appreciation.

  • LibreWolf (no donations) :: the browser based on ff, a window to the web. Full-fledged, No BS, freedom and privacy-respecting. Rare, but luckily existing. The project doesn't accept donations, but you can contribute your time to it or just share a word about the project.

  • Migadu (pay) :: my primary email provider and email is my primary communication tool. While most of the infrastructure is based on FOSS, it's not a FOSS project on its own. This is one of the rare examples of commercial projects making a respectful software. Also, a good example of the project that don't try to grow indefinitely, and operates on its own comfortable scale. "Not so much for profit company". The web interface is clean and on point, the protocols are standard and complaint. No ads, no vendorlock, no attention robbery. People in support are professional, they are technical specialists, who can actually answer the questions or help to troubleshoot a problem. Commercial software, web sites and services can be respectful too, this is a clear example.

  • Fosstodon (support) :: a short message oriented fediverse (mastodon) instance. Mastodon is similiar to twitter/bluesky, but federated. Interoperable with other fedi services, including peertube, lemmy, pixelfed and much more. There are a few options: to pay to mastodon devs and to people who maintain, operate and moderate a particular instance.

  • SourceHut (pay) :: No AI, No JS, No BS, No ADS. My primary git hosting at the moment. Not the easiest, not the prettiest, but very capable and do the shit you need from a git hosting. One can contribute and use most of the functionality without even creating an account. It has a kernel-org vibe. It's another example of a managed FOSS service, mid-sized and sustainable. If you look for more github-like alternative with Pull Requests and stuff, take a look at codeberg.org.

  • Voice (support) :: a simple audiobook player. It doesn't have to be a huge, mission critical application, we can pay for a thing, when it just makes our life a bit easier and nicer. This one will be that one.

Conclusion

I could go further for hours. Video editing with ffmpeg, actually useful feeds with fresshrss, books library management with calibre, etc, etc. It's not the point to list all of the cool stuff here, the point is to share the idea, to give the inspiration, to normalize paying for the good craft and respectful things. Just try it. It will make the day for the author of the program. It will make the day for you.