14 DAY TRIAL // Each month, Ubuntu MATE gives money from their donations back to the community, usually to projects integrated into the Linux distro and making the life of developers easier. The MATE desktop and TLP are this month's choices.
As the name implies, Ubuntu MATE is using the MATE desktop, so giving back upstream to the MATE team is not actually all that surprising. It's not a large sum of money, but that is not the point. The Ubuntu MATE project doesn't gather a lot of money from donations, but they made a point of donating a part of those proceeds to other projects, mostly to make a point.
If you think about it, all the Linux distributions use packages built by other developers, for the most part. It's true that only a small number of those distros are successful and get enough money from donations to get by, but if everyone would contribute upstream towards the most used projects, then the entire ecosystem would stand to benefit from it.
MATE and TLP are just a couple in a long time of contributions
The donations towards other projects started a few months ago, and they've become a monthly occurrence, which is very nice. What the Ubuntu MATE devs are doing is take money from their donation fund and forward a good portion of that to other developers. Even if it's usually a small sum, it's still enough to transmit a signal to other people.
"Ubuntu MATE is comprised of many Open Source projects, we recognise that. Each month that Ubuntu MATE has a surplus of funds we will make a contribution to an Open Source project that Ubuntu MATE directly benefits from. For May 2015, Ubuntu MATE have sponsored Thomas Kock, the lead developer of TLP. Also, we have donated half the download tips from May 2015, which we are pleased to say amounts to €288 ($323)," said Martin Wimpress on the official website.
You can download the latest version of Ubuntu MATE from Softpedia and give it a spin.