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We’re halfway through February, and since it’s also Valentine’s Day, it’s the perfect time to show that we have a good heart by choosing an open source project and a charity to support, just like we do each month. This month, it was the first time for Sebastian, the person responsible for project implementation in our team, to choose the beneficiaries.

As a great film enthusiast, though not necessarily always an enthusiast of great films, Sebastian decided to support VideoLAN, the organisation which develops one of the best media players – VLC. VLC has been around for over 17 years, and it is available for all popular operating systems and mobile devices. It also comes in over 40 language versions. We are very grateful for this wonderful program and wish the creators all the best in its further development!

We’re also making a donation to the Animal Shelter in Korabiewice, run by Viva! Foundation. The shelter cares not only for many cats and dogs but also for horses, cows, goats, and other livestock animals. The shelter has had a fairly rough history – up until 2012, it was in the hands of people who kept the animals in terrible conditions – people who didn’t look after them, but made them suffer instead. Fortunately, there were others who weren’t so insensitive to the animals’ fate. They took over the shelter and have been providing the animals with the best conditions possible for six years now. Thank you and best regards!

We have already cleaned up the last of the confetti, and finished the remaining New Year’s champagne, so for the first time in this new year we continue our monthly tradition of helping open source projects and others in need. The task of selecting who to support was assigned to Wojtek Siewierski. He has been working with us for over a year, but this is his first opportunity to take this honourable role.

Wojtek decided that in January we should aid the GnuPG project, an encryption software package which our team has been using for years to secure e-mail correspondence. We previously showed our appreciation for GnuPG back in 2013, when we first gave financial support for the project – and now we are doing it again without hesitation. By the way, we’d like to send our thanks and belated birthday wishes to the package developers, as GnuPG recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the release of its first version (December 20th, 1997). Thank you, and we wish you all the best!

Through the Avalon Foundation we are also providing aid to Marcin Sztrubel, who for over ten years has been struggling with progressive muscular atrophy. Marcin himself tries to help others suffering from similar diseases by participating in the Polish Society for Neuromuscular Diseases. However, to be able to continue to do so and to enjoy life, he requires constant specialist and expensive rehabilitation. We hope we can help him to finance it, at least to a small extent. We wish you all the best, Marcin!

For the last five years, Christmas time has been about giving a present to our friends from one of many charitable organisations. It is our tradition to perform a small project which helps an organisation in achieving its goals.

This year our Christmas project is the expansion of the website for Onkobieg, a charitable running event organised by the “Sarcoma” Association. A couple of months ago we created a new version of the Onkobieg website and introduced the ability to register for the event via the Internet. Even back then the Association had further plans to develop the website, so we’ve decided that this would be a perfect fit for our Christmas project.

The most important implemented website function is the ability to provide recurring donations by the Onkobieg website visitors. Those who want to regularly support the event will be able to do so conveniently by turning on monthly automatic payments. We are also working on a new form, which will allow site visitors to register as a voluntary contributor to help with Onkobieg events.

Our project is still in the works – unfortunately we don’t have as many elves to help us as Santa does. Most of the new features are, however, ready. They are being extensively tested at the moment and will become visible on the Onkobieg website in a couple of days (we will inform you about this).

Tis December and wintertime –
but indeed the changing weather
either makes the sky look fine
or look like it’d snow forever.

In contrast to this season, our commitment to supporting open source initiatives and charities is pretty much consistent, and just like in all the previous months, it’s now time for its latest installment. The last beneficiaries of this year have been chosen by Leszek Kalota, a programmer from Teresin, who’s debuting in this pleasant role.

Leszek chose to give the donation to the Git project, one of the most popular version control systems, without which we wouldn’t be able to work efficiently. We’ve already shown our gratefulness, helping the project already in 2012, 2015 and 2016. This will be the fourth time then. As before, we’d like to thank the programmers of Git for the meticulous development of their software, and we wish them all the best in their future work on the project!

The other beneficiary of this month is the “Mam Marzenie” (“I have a dream”) Foundation. Its mission is to make the dreams of children with life-threatening diseases come true. Since its inception in 2003, the Foundation has fulfilled over 7,000 such dreams, bringing joy to those children and letting them forget, at least for a moment, about their difficult struggles with illness. We’re very glad that we can contribute to this noble cause, and we hope that the Foundation will be able to make all dreams come true!