Blog

Spring is coming fast – it is already the middle of March. This means it’s time to provide financial support for another open source project and for somebody who needs help. This time Dawid Jancen makes the choices.

The first of the March donations goes to the Linux Foundation, which has been working since 2000 to support the development of Linux, and they have already received a donation from us back in July 2015. Most of our team uses Linux on their own desk computers and laptops, as well as the servers for the projects we work on – that’s why this foundation’s activity is close to our hearts. We send our regards to them all, wishing them good luck in the further development of the operating system with the penguin mascot!

This month we are also helping Karolina Pastwa from Tczew. While Dawid and Karolina have never met, they do have mutual friends, and hence his decision to support her. She suffers from a neuroendocrine tumour of the small intestine. Karolina fights for health, not just for herself but also for her son. Karolina, please accept our regards; we are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that your whole family can be healthy.

Frost and winter have not stood in our way in designating the next monthly beneficiaries of our financial assistance. In February, Tomek Antosik held the honourable function of making the selection.

The open source project that Tomek has decided to distinguish is Redmine, a web-based project management system released under the GPL license. Redmine has for many years been an essential tool in the work of our entire team, so it appears as our choice for the third time. As always, we would like to thank the developers for this great tool and wish them good luck in their further work on its development.

We are also providing support for Kubuś Zwiech. A multi-organ dysfunction resulting from congenital metabolic disease means that Kubuś requires specialized help, motor rehabilitation, neurological speech therapy treatments and sensory integration. Thanks to his hard work and that of his parents, an improvement has been observed in his motor development and muscle tension. His parents are collecting money to continue his rehabilitation – and we are glad that we can help even a little bit. We are sending hugs to you, Kubuś, and to your parents, as well as keeping our fingers crossed and wishing you the soonest possible effects of the treatments, plus much strength in your fight against the disease.

The new year has begun, so it is time for the January instalment of our monthly financial support campaign for open-source projects and charities. This time the beneficiaries were selected by Marcin Tabaka.

On his initiative, we decided to support a project called Laravel DataTables, which is (as is often the case) used by some of our team in their everyday work. It is a useful add-on to the PHP framework, and it facilitates use of the jQuery DataTables plugin in various web applications. In our case, it is used in the implementation of a control panel for our proprietary CMS system. Thanks and regards to the developers!

We have also made a donation through Siepomaga.pl to Mikołaj Zalega, who suffers from a rare condition called TRAPS. The aim is to buy the drugs that will give this lad a chance of avoiding recurrent severe fevers in the future. Mikołaj, we wish you much luck in persevering in your struggle for health. Wishing you and your parents all the best.

Following last week’s announcement, we bring news about this year’s Christmas project. This is already the fourth time that we carry out a project for a charity prior to Christmas time – for free. This year our task was to upgrade the website for the “Westies for Adoption” foundation.

The foundation is run by a group of dog lovers devoted to West Highland White Terriers. Its mission, as the founders say, is to:

”(…) help the white terriers of character, with more and more of them ending up on the streets, abused and exhausted. We arrange adoptions, help many organizations and foundations, find the best homes for our animals, and do not indulge the whims of people just looking for a popular puppy. We restore these terriers’ dignities, and rebuild their faith in people”.

Within our project, we moved the Foundation’s website to a new CMS and introduced fresh mechanisms for handling pre-adoption questionnaires, votes and auctions. We hope that this more attractive website will help the Foundation find responsible owners for as many needy dogs as possible.

With Christmas approaching it is time for our final monthly charity initiative of the year. This time our support goes to the beneficiaries chosen by Michał Dziekoński: the Let’s Encrypt project and the Friends of Animals foundation, the latter running an animal shelter in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki.

The Let’s Encrypt project, launched in 2012, aims to provide free TLS certificates that can be acquired and installed in a simple, automated way. The project has enabled a wide range of users to apply encryption to their web servers, contributing to a greater level of security across the Web. The project sponsors include the Mozilla Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Congratulations! We wish the Let’s Encrypt team many more successes in developing their project.

We are pleased to announce that this is the second time that we are supporting the Friends of Animals Foundation and its animal shelter in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki. Works to extend the shelter have been in progress for several years, and are described on their website. Best of luck with the extension, and all your other efforts to help homeless animals!

This is definitely not the end of our charitable activities this year, though. In December we are running our traditional Christmas project. Check back soon to learn more!