One Percent 2021

The year 2020 is ended, and with it my first working year has also concluded. Among occasional gigs, small jobs, and my main occupation, I managed to use free software consistently, partly for ethical reasons and partly out of habit. Thus, inspired by the “unopercento” (One Percent) call promoted by Linux.it ¹, I have decided to donate part of my earnings to the projects I use most.

For this round, as I started working around mid-year, I have decided to limit myself to just two projects, fairly compensating the tools I use as an electronic designer and firmware developer:

• Kicad - A CAD software for designing electronic circuits and generating schematics for printed circuit board production. I have been using it for small hobby projects for the past five years, starting with version 4. The progressive improvements have significantly enhanced its stability and functionality, making it an excellent software comparable to commercial alternatives. This motivated me to abandon Eagle CAD and permanently switch to free software, where I now carry out small work assignments for my job.

• GCC - The capital-T toolchain for compilation. Available for all architectures that a firmware developer might need, complemented with delightful options: makefiles, debuggers, standard libraries. In short, as someone who works with microcontrollers and embedded systems, I often and enjoyably use the tools provided by the GCC toolchain.

For this year, I am stopping here with a modest investment of around 60 euros, equally distributed. With the hope of being able to do more in the next round.