🪥 FlossFunding

if ci_badges.map(&:color).detect { it != "green"} ☝️ let me know on Discord or RubyForum, as I may have missed the notification.

if ci_badges.map(&:color).all? { it == "green"} 👇️ send money so I can do more of this. FLOSS maintenance is now my full-time job.

I've summarized my thoughts in this blog post.

This tool can help library maintainers earn money from their open source work in one line of code, because maintainers have teeth, and need to pay their dentists.

• 👉️ No network calls.
• 👉️ No tracking.
• 👉️ No oversight.
• 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing.
• 💡 Easily disabled*

* There will be many ways to disable nags, to ensure it is always an option for Mr. Scrooge. A global ones is:

ENV['FLOSS_CFG_FUND_SILENT'] = "CATHEDRAL_OR_BAZAAR"`

Instructions for turning this tool off will always be front and center. If all you want is to turn it off, no sense in wasting your time figuring out how.

Now, back to the one line of code I mentioned. If you blink you may miss it...

module MyGemLibrary
  include FlossFunding::Poke.new(__FILE__) # <====== THERE IT IS! ONE LINE OF CODE!
end

OK, the one line of code was a bit of a lie. You do have to require the gem. So it is two lines of code.

Complete setup steps are:

1. Add gem to your Gemfile:

gem "floss_funding"

2. Run the generator:

bundle exec rake floss_funding:install

• Idempotent: each file is handled independently. If a file already exists, you will be prompted to [d]iff, [o]verwrite, [s]kip, or [a]bort (set FF_INSTALL_CHOICE=overwrite|skip|abort|diff for non-interactive runs).
• Adds or updates .gitignore to include a sentinel ignore for FlossFunding lockfiles: .floss_funding.*.lock.

3. Configure generated defaults:

nano .floss_funding.yml

4. Add to your code (already done!):

   require "floss_funding"

   module MyLibrary
   # namespace (optional): custom namespace for activation key
   # config_file (optional): alternate file name for your config at the library root (defaults to .floss_funding.yml)
   include FlossFunding::Poke.new(__FILE__, namespace: "MyLibrary", config_file: ".my_custom.yml")
   end

The website that will generate activation keys for your gems is coming soon @ floss-funding.dev. FLOSS Funding relies on empathy, respect, honor, and annoyance of the most extreme mildness. It doesn't accept payments for activation keys, and trusts you to go and sponsor or donate to your favorite open source projects before getting their "activation key".

What does an activation key do? It silences the nags for a library, and "activates" your peace of mind. It rewards you with a gold star sticker (⭐️) for each project you fund when your process exits. That's it.

The project does not affect licensing of projects. It is purely a tool to help library maintainers earn money from their open source work.

This is permitted by nearly all, if not all, FLOSS licenses, including the popular MIT, BSD 2-clause, BSD 3-clause, Apache 2.0, etc.

There are two kinds of "free" in software:

1. Free as in beer
2. Free as in freedom (of speech)

No FLOSS licenses I am aware of guarantee "free as in beer". Since developers deserve to be paid for their work, I decided to make this tool.

It has been my experience that work on the dark underbelly of software, down in the test harnesses, and the dev tools, often gets overlooked, as people focus on the big frameworks.

This tool makes it far easier to get paid for your work down there at the bottom of the stack, in the dev dependencies that get overlooked by most OSS funding tools.

Activation keys use a cipher encryption algorithm against a 2400-word dictionary, with some other data, like the project's namespace, and the current month, thrown in, to make valid activation keys slightly difficult to discover manually. Once a key is made it is valid forever. There is no revocation. The activation keys are opaque, rather than private. They are not tied to you in any way. Other people may use the same one. And that's fine! They don't do anything except silence some STDOUT nagging.

Tokens to Remember
Works with JRuby
Works with Truffle Ruby
Works with MRI Ruby 4
Works with MRI Ruby 3
Works with MRI Ruby 2
Works with MRI Ruby 1
Support & Community
Source
Documentation
Compliance
Style
Maintainer 🎖️
... 💖	🧊 🐙 🛖 🧪

Compatible with MRI Ruby 1.9.2+, JRuby, and TruffleRuby. CI workflows and Appraisals are generated for MRI Ruby 2.4+. This test floor is configured by ruby.test_minimum in .kettle-jem.yml and may be higher than the gem's runtime compatibility floor when legacy Rubies are not practical for the current toolchain.

The amazing test matrix is powered by the kettle-dev stack.

Gem	Source	Role	Total downloads
appraisal2	GitHub	multi-dependency Appraisal matrix generation
appraisal2-rubocop	GitHub	RuboCop Appraisal generator integration
kettle-dev	GitHub	development, release, and CI workflow tooling
kettle-jem	GitHub	Appraisals & CI workflow templates
kettle-soup-cover	GitHub	SimpleCov coverage policy and reporting
kettle-test	GitHub	standard test runner and coverage harness
rubocop-lts	GitHub	Ruby-version-aware linting
turbo_tests2	GitHub	parallel test execution

Support tiers describe what this project's CI actually exercises, not what may work in an untested environment:

• Parallel support: CI runs the test suite with multiple workers available.
• Unsupported: the engine/platform combination is not covered by CI and is not a project compatibility claim.

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

The maintainers of this and thousands of other packages are working with Tidelift to deliver commercial support and maintenance for the open source packages you use to build your applications. Save time, reduce risk, and improve code health, while paying the maintainers of the exact packages you use.

• 💡Subscribe for support guarantees covering all your FLOSS dependencies
• 💡Tidelift is part of Sonar
• 💡Tidelift pays maintainers to maintain the software you depend on!
  📊@Pointy Haired Boss: An enterprise support subscription is "never gonna let you down", and supports open source maintainers

Alternatively:

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add floss_funding

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install floss_funding

For global silence the best solution is to set the environment variable FLOSS_CFG_FUND_SILENT=CATHEDRAL_OR_BAZAAR before your application starts.

If you can't control ENV variables, and you can control the stack, at the beginning of the stack, before other things load, simply require "floss_funding/silent", and it will silence all output. Note that this is less performant than setting the global environment variable, as above.

silent options values can be any of:

• truthy - indicates that the library including Poke.new requires FlossFunding to be silent, perhaps due to scanning the output of a command, or generating output that is expected elsewhere.
• falsey - indicates that the library including Poke.new does not require FlossFunding to be silent. This is effectively the default.
• Object that responds to :call - indicates that the library including Poke.new might require FlossFunding to be silent, and that evaluation will be done whenever FlossFunding attempts to print something.

If you have a library that doesn't know, at the time of Poke.new inclusion, if it needs silence, pass an object that responds to :call as the silent option to FlossFunding::Poke.new.

IMPORTANT - By the time your Poke.new using library loads into a stack, other libraries may have already loaded Poke.new for themselves, and may have already generated output. This is not a solution for silencing all output. The main thing it can reliably do is silence the output from the at_exit handler.

If you need to silence everything, do so by setting the environment variable FLOSS_CFG_FUND_SILENT=CATHEDRAL_OR_BAZAAR before your application starts.

Gems that use the floss_funding gem can configure some features by creating a .floss_funding.yml file at their root directory. This works in the same manner as .rubocop.yml for gems that use RuboCop.

The following options are configured via the .floss_funding.yml file:

1. suggested_donation_amount - The suggested donation amount to display in the begging message (default: 5)
2. floss_funding_url - The URL to direct users to for donations or sponsorship a. default: https://floss-funding.dev, which doesn't take donations on behalf of other projects, but it will have helpful tips on how to find a way to donate.

In your .floss_funding.yml at the root of your project:

suggested_donation_amount: 10
floss_funding_url: https://example.com/fund

Usage pattern options when including in to a library namespace:

1. Traditional namespace (uses the including module's name):

   include FlossFunding::Poke.new(__FILE__)

2. Arbitrary custom namespace (can add version, or anything else):

   include FlossFunding::Poke.new(__FILE__, namespace: "Custom::Namespace::V4")

3. Explicitly disable gemspec parsing, and config discovery (including library_name) by passing nil and wedge: true:

   include FlossFunding::Poke.new(nil, wedge: true)

4. Provide a custom config file name located at the library root: module MyGemLibrary

   include FlossFunding::Poke.new(__FILE__, config_file: ".my_custom.yml")

In all cases, the first parameter should be a String file path (e.g., __FILE__) or nil to disable discovery.

While galtzo-floss tools are free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of... "dollars" would make the project more sustainable.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences. Currently, Open Collective is our preferred funding platform.

If you're working in a company that's making significant use of galtzo-floss tools we'd appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a galtzo-floss sponsor.

You can support the development of galtzo-floss tools via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, PayPal, Open Collective and Tidelift.

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

NOTE: kettle-readme-backers updates this list every day, automatically.

No backers yet. Be the first!

Become a sponsor and get your logo on our README on GitHub with a link to your site. [Become a sponsor]

NOTE: kettle-readme-backers updates this list every day, automatically.

No sponsors yet. Be the first!

I’m driven by a passion to foster a thriving open-source community – a space where people can tackle complex problems, no matter how small. Revitalizing libraries that have fallen into disrepair, and building new libraries focused on solving real-world challenges, are my passions. I was recently affected by layoffs, and the tech jobs market is unwelcoming. I’m reaching out here because your support would significantly aid my efforts to provide for my family, and my farm (11 🐔 chickens, 2 🐶 dogs, 3 🐰 rabbits, 8 🐈‍ cats).

If you work at a company that uses my work, please encourage them to support me as a corporate sponsor. My work on gems you use might show up in bundle fund.

I’m developing a new library, floss_funding, designed to empower open-source developers like myself to get paid for the work we do, in a sustainable way. Please give it a look.

Floss-Funding.dev: 👉️ No network calls. 👉️ No tracking. 👉️ No oversight. 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing. 💡 Easily disabled nags

See SECURITY.md.

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, check issues or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Everyone interacting with this project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists agrees to follow the .

Made with contributors-img.

Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/galtzo-floss/floss_funding/-/graphs/main

This library follows for its public API where practical. For most applications, prefer the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("floss_funding", "~> 1.0")

Dropping support for a platform can be a breaking change for affected users. If a release changes supported platforms, it should be called out clearly in the changelog and versioned with that impact in mind.

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project's lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

• "Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred"

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of releases.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT .

See LICENSE.md for the official copyright notice.

• Copyright (c) 2025 Annibelle Boling
• Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Peter H. Boling

Maintainers have teeth and need to pay their dentists. After getting laid off in an RIF in March, and encountering difficulty finding a new one, I began spending most of my time building open source tools. I'm hoping to be able to pay for my kids' health insurance this month, so if you value the work I am doing, I need your support. Please consider sponsoring me or the project.

To join the community or get help, use the RubyForum or Discord.

To say "thanks!" ☝️ Join the community or 👇️ send money.

💌 💌 💌

Many parts of this project are actively managed by a kettle-jem smart template utilizing StructuredMerge.org merge contracts.

Thanks for RTFM. ☺️