14 DAY TRIAL // The Ubuntu MATE developers usually post details about donations from the previous month, and regardless of what people might think, it's actually a very interesting read. The same is true for the month of October.
The Ubuntu MATE devs have started a very nice public trend of publishing everything they are doing with the money they receive from donations. Other projects have similar transparency procedures, but that's not all. In the case of Ubuntu MATE, we also see that a slice of those funds is going to other teams and developers.
If you think about it, Ubuntu MATE is built from various components. For the most part, it's about integrating packages and applications that were built by someone else. The open source nature of these projects ensures that anyone can just pick a component and use it, and even make money off it. Developers usually need to contribute back with code, not with money.
Ubuntu MATE is doing something different with the money for now
In the past few months, the Ubuntu MATE devs took some of the money from donations and gave it to other teams, who are not involved with their OS in any way. It's their way of showing that they are contributing back. Now they have some new plans for the 16.04 development cycle.
"We are going to run some small paid projects for Ubuntu MATE during the 16.04 development cycle. We are saving the remainder of this month surplus for that initiative, the details of which will be shared here in due course. Ubuntu MATE 15.10 for the Raspberry Pi 2, released last month, is very popular and we have a significant upturn in bandwidth usage, as a result," wrote Ubuntu MATE developer Martin Wimpress.
We can hardly wait to see what these projects for Ubuntu MATE 16.04 are, but I'm pretty sure we're going to find out very soon.