[kortilla]

From a multiplicative effect and the current lack of funds it very well could be. Small improvements to development (reduction in bugs, reduction in cpu waste, etc) to things as widely used as these could mean that your $1 donated got multiplied millions of times in dev time saved.

This massive leverage is sort of unique to open source because it’s non-rivalrous. Resources you donate like food, shelter, etc can only help a limited number of people.

Note that this analysis of highest-impact does not make any moral judgements about which is more important. I personally would rather pay to help build plumbing in Uganda rather than this, but it definitely won’t have the same leverage.

[learnstats2]

> $1 donated got multiplied millions of times in dev time saved.

Love that trickle-down economics,

Step 1: less time spent on dev tasks

Step 2: ??????

Step 3: end war, end hunger

[enneff]

Just the usual tech industry delusions of grandeur.

[kortilla]

It’s not a delusion of grandeur, it’s the reality of how technology works. A single program can easily be used by millions of people.

An improvement to the Linux kernel scheduler that could reduce the power consumption of every android phone and the majority of servers in the world by 0.01% has a bigger impact than building an entire offshore wind farm.

Let that sink in. It’s hard to fathom how leveraged changes are to the software run all over the world. This is not delusions of grandeur, this is just the reality of so much of the world running on the same software.

[kortilla]

Where did I say it ended war or hunger? You’re confusing economic impact with impact for an individual.