I've used PostgreSQL in a variety of commercial projects now for 10 years or so. It's been a delight! During this time, we've never needed any support, nor paid for anything.
Recently, I've started thinking about and discussing with others the idea of making a recurring payment in support of the project.
Ideally, we'd like those funds to support further development work (rather than, say, advocacy, or sales & marketing at a commercial enterprise). And we'd like the work we support to be 100% open source.
The most obvious option I found was to donate to the general project, here:
From that page, the description of funds usage is:
"The money donated goes to many vital services that the PostgreSQL community needs including advocacy materials, project infrastructure, legal expenses, and more."
This sounds like worthwhile stuff, but it doesn't sound exactly like what we're looking for (see above)?
Another option seems to be to pay for commercial support from one of the vendors that employ core/major contributors:
Of course, we don't actually need support (yet!), and presumably those funds would be used for all the functions of such a business, like sales, marketing, support, etc. in addition to software development and documentation work.
Perhaps I'm being naive, and the community is better funded than I realize, and this isn't a practical need (whereas, say, funding for the above-mentioned community needs is)?
Generally speaking then, what guidance would you provide for someone looking to give back to the project by supporting the ongoing development of open-source PostgreSQL software?
Thanks in advance for any input, and thank you to everyone who has made PostgreSQL such a great product over the years!
--Dan.