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KickstarterNatacha SpringerAnnouncement
Supporting Open Source: Our Donations for 2018
Summary
Kickstarter describes its 2018 effort to support the open-source ecosystem through financial contributions aligned with its PBC charter and stated values. After surveying engineers for nominations, the company split its yearly donation budget among two open-source projects, Babel and Webpack, and four organizations supporting learning or coding skills: Advent of Code, Rails Girls Summer of Code, Code Nation, and Code Cooperative. Babel converts ECMAScript 2015+ into backwards-compatible JavaScript, while Webpack bundles JavaScript used at Kickstarter. The other recipients support collaborative problem-solving, participation by women and non-binary individuals, technology pathways for students in under-resourced high schools, and technology education for formerly incarcerated people. The post also notes an engineer’s weekly Code Nation mentoring and invites engineers to join the team and help choose future recipients.
Context
Kickstarter says its PBC charter commits the company to supporting a more creative and equitable world, with operations reflecting those values. Because it uses substantial open-source software, it aims to contribute financially to the open-source ecosystem.
Approach / What changed
Kickstarter surveyed its engineers for nominations and divided its yearly donation budget among Babel, Webpack, Advent of Code, Rails Girls Summer of Code, Code Nation, and Code Cooperative. The selections included two software projects and four organizations focused on learning or improving coding skills within the open-source community.
Takeaways
Babel converts ECMAScript 2015+ code into backwards-compatible JavaScript, enabling Kickstarter to use newer JavaScript technologies across current and older browsers or environments.
The donations support both software infrastructure and community development, including Advent of Code, Rails Girls Summer of Code, Code Nation, and Code Cooperative.
A senior Kickstarter engineer mentors Code Nation students weekly, and the company invited engineers to help select future donation recipients.
Source and freshness
- Source
- medium.com
- Published
- Added to Yomu
- Last updated
Summaries are generated from the original by a language model. Check the original before relying on it.
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