Flattr: Support Your Favourite FLOSS Software!

So what's Flattr? Well, it's a social micropayment system you can use to donate money, but you can only receive as long as you also give which sounds like a very interesting concept. So only members who pay (the minimum subscription fee is 2 euro) can use Flattr.

The guys behind Flattr explain best the purpose of this new social micropayment system:

People would just ignore sending donations if it wasn't for a really important cause. Sending just a small sum has always been a pain in the ass. Who would ever even login to a payment system just to donate €0.01? And €10 was just too high for just one blog entry we liked...

Flattr will currently get 10% (for maintenance) of your subscription and divide the rest evenly between the people you flatter. But they say that once the website grows, they will stop asking for the 10% fee.

Why did we wrote a post on Flattr? Because maybe you would like to give something back to the free open source software you love and use daily. A lot of software is on Flattr already: foobar2000, NoScript, Tor and even the Debian Package Manager and many many other developers, artists and so on who really deserve this. So why not give a few cents (or more) to show your appreciation for the FLOSS software you use daily?

There is even an idea to use Flattr with the Ubuntu Software Center so you can directly donate from within the USC but even though this has been brought up for discussion in the past, there's no official word on it yet (on any type of donation from the Ubuntu Software Center).


If you're a developer or blogger, you'll be glad to know Flattr offers a badge or button you can use on your website or application so people can directly flattr you from there. You can see such a button at the bottom of this post. But of course, you can also get/receive flattr directly from Flattr.com.