And what I mean specifically, is donating money to small, open-source, or even shareware programs.

They do not make you pay up front, and I do agree with what Jeff has to say on this issue. But for me, the best project that deserves my money, is Notepad++. It is a simple, immensely powerful text editor. It starts in less than a second, even on slower systems, makes as much of the screen available to code in, has tabs, has split screen(!!!!), and most importantly: can be extended with support for other languages.

Those two features are so huge. Say I want to learn the latest and greatest language, say FF++. Notepad++ may not have built-in support, but with a bit of work( or googling) I can add syntax coloring. And the split screen? Allows me to look at one file, in two different spots, or two different files, etc etc. It allows me to check the requirements of classes, functions, see how code works, anything.

It is above and beyond the usefulness of most of the ide’s and text editors on both Linux and Windows. VS2003 is pretty damn good, features good project management, but does not start quickly. For a large project, something like Visual Studio is perfect, but for everyday needs, quick script writing, Notepad++ is perfect.

And that is why I’ve made a $20 dollar donation(CAD). Sorry for the exchange rate making it less than 20! And, if there any pieces of free software which you use, and love, and believe in, support it! You’d want someone donating to your project, wouldn’t you?