Thanks, it restores my faith in our community to get a complement.

I felt like I had finally made it in life where I was sustaining and so I did maybe a dozen donations to software I actually used as a signal of thanks.

I tried to make the amounts at least equal to commercial counterparts or at $100 each since it's enough of an amount a developer will understand the deep appreciation and value others have in their gifted labor and to encourage them to keep up the awesome work.

I probably did at least another 1k that year to specialized Linux FOSS apps that professionals use -- KDE, gimp, krita, inkscape, libreoffice, etc... -- I don't have as much free time to put into bug reports and grinding triaging bugs so I figured material could be a way to help out.

Thanks for listening to me vent. IIUC that mod was later removed 6?m later after a burnout blowup and they unbanned a number of people as per request but I decided not to request being unbanned as I felt that the writing was on the wall and it underscored __ the need __ for Linux Forums and Communities to not be controlled by any one person, niche group, or commercial interest. Thus I made my avatar a picture of Mastodon on a 100k karma profile over 10 years of Linux and here we are in the future hopefully in a new place where we can be free and live by the principles of libre and FOSs to share and help each other.

In any case, sincerely thank you for being courageous and restoring my faith that there are people out there that share my values and digital love for open source. Cheers :)