Coffey LabsPay for the servers, not the software
Everything we make is free to run and will stay that way. If one of these projects earns its keep on your hardware, this is how to help cover the machines behind it.
| What | Cost | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Three servers | $210 / month | Budget desktop-grade machines at Hetzner, about $70 each. They are the primary git host and CI, every website and docs site, the community forum, the Mastodon instance and the demos. |
| Load balancer | $25 / month | Cloudflare, in front of the web tier so a host can be taken out for maintenance without anybody noticing. |
| Domains and certificates | about $300 / year | The product and company domains, and a code-signing certificate when a release needs one. |
| Total | about $3,100 / year | Paid out of pocket so far. |
What the money pays for
The servers. Coffey Labs runs its own git host and CI, its own forum and its own Mastodon instance rather than renting them, for the same reason the products exist: the thing under an incident should be a thing you can read. That costs about $235 a month in machines, and the table above is the whole bill.
There are no salaries in it. Anything above the hosting bill goes to the costs a release runs into: a code-signing certificate, test accounts with the providers inbuxa’s migration tool imports from, the odd domain renewal. If sponsorship ever covers more than that, this page will say what the rest went to.
How to give
- GitHub Sponsors (opens in a new tab) One-time or monthly, any amount. For now this is the founder’s personal Sponsors page: the company’s own account opens once its bank account does, and the link here and in the site header will move to it. The money covers the same servers either way.
- funding.json The machine-readable version of this page, for the funds and directories that read one. It lists the projects, their licenses and the ways to give.
Liberapay and a thanks.dev listing follow the bank account. Nothing on this page asks for your email address, and there is no newsletter.
What it does not buy
A feature. A priority lane. A say in the roadmap or the license. Every project stays under its current license whether or not anyone sponsors it, and nothing is held back for people who pay. The one thing a sponsor gets that nobody else does is a thank-you by name below, and only if they want one.
Coffey Labs LLC is a company, not a charity, so a sponsorship is not a tax-deductible gift. A business can usually treat it as an ordinary expense; ask your accountant, not us.
Grants
We also apply for grants and foundation funding, on one condition we read every award against: nothing we accept may restrict keeping the projects under their current licenses, or stop the company from offering paid hosting or support later on. Awards are listed here when they land, with what they paid for.
Who has helped
Names appear here with permission, and only names: no logos and no tiers. Thank you.
Other ways to help
- File the bug (opens in a new tab) A reproducible report is worth more than most donations. Every product page links to its repository.
- Run one and say so A write-up of how it went, a listing review, or a talk at your local group. The products are found by word of mouth, and that is the part money cannot buy.
- Answer a question (opens in a new tab) On the forum, where the answer stays findable for the next person. Translations and documentation fixes count too.