There are numerous ways to support many of the open source products that we all use directly or indirectly every day. From the venerable Apache server to products like VLC, our generation of technology consumers have benefitted a lot from the hard work of others.
While it is not possible for us to contribute to these projects in a direct manner like contributing patches or helping with the documentation, we can still help open source projects in a different manner: by seeding the files on bittorrent.
Not every project needs this, especially the established and existing ones like Apache, but for a smaller project, bandwidth can often be a major stumbling block. This is where you can chip in.
Check if some of the projects you use have a download made available on bittorrent and seed it for as long as you can.
For most of us on broadband connections, with FUP limits in excess of 50 GB, one or two GB donated to seeding a project release is not even a blip on the radar. And considering the 'other' bits you accumulate downloading files over bittorrent and watching YouTube, these are good bytes that would look good on your karmic balance sheet.
I am currently seeding the 3.0.2 release of NeoOffice and have a ratio of 5.24 at the moment. With smaller projects this is likely to be the case as not too many people download a release on bittorrent, Besides, you can also cap the upload at 10 or 20 KBps and control the maximum volume of data you will wind up transferring over time. If you know of any other smaller projects that could do with the bandwidth, do let me know. I will only be glad to help in seeding the files.
I hope you will find an OSS project that could do with such help and chip in. It does make a difference.
