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While looking up past posts for a question based on a flawed premise, I noticed that in 2018's Stack Overflow Gives Back post, SE mentioned that they donated to organisations that built tools that Stack's engineering teams use:

While we’re super excited to be giving back to these impactful nonprofits, it’s also important that we recognize the tools and organizations that help our Engineering and IT teams do their jobs everyday. This year, we donated $1,000 to each of the following organizations Powershell Summit OnRamp; OpenSSL Foundation; HAProxy; LetsEncrypt; Free Open Ghost.

This seems missing in the 2019 and 2020 iterations.

I recognise a few names that are critical to both SE and the Internet as a whole. OpenSSL particularly came to mind.

Are these annual donations ongoing? If not, are there any plans to bring them back and recognise the projects that help make all this possible?

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You are absolutely correct; the open-source donations that were a part of the first decade of the Stack Gives Back program were put on hold for the past few years.

We all have a deep appreciation for everyone who puts time and energy into the open-source projects upon which much of our platform is based. We’re delighted to be able to once again show our appreciation in a tangible way, moving forward. While we may experiment with different methods for doing this in the future, it seems right that we start by expressing our appreciation with financial support for many of the projects that we are dependent on.

Thus, I am pleased to announce that starting this year (2022), we have resumed our financial support to open-source projects.

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    Erf. While I'm glad its back up, and things are slowly getting back to normal, I'm rather disappointed at so much the leadership did in between, including this ._.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 25, 2022 at 12:54
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    You are absolutely correct; the open-source donations that were a part of the first decade of the Stack Gives Back program were put on hold for the past few years. - why wasn't this statement made over a year ago when this Q was asked? IMHU a sad indictment of SO the company, and their failure to own their decisions
    – chris neilsen
    Jul 26, 2022 at 2:51
  • My timelines are a bit sketchy but SE was acquired shortly after this, and well, there was a lot of change over the period. I'm more annoyed that the 'previous' management felt roughly about 5k or so was worth cutting out for whatever reason for projects instrumental to SE's setup and vital to the internet as a whole. I'm actually more understanding about the delay than that it was removed
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 26, 2022 at 3:37
  • @chrisneilsen well, don't shoot the messenger, Yaakov isn't part of management.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jul 26, 2022 at 7:10
  • Well - I suspect most of the folks who made this decision are not with the company any more. There's no point shooting anyone
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 26, 2022 at 7:21
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    @ShadowTheKidWizard, guessing, but I expect staff were not allowed to respond to Q's like this. Like I said, an indictment of the company, ie management and governance
    – chris neilsen
    Jul 26, 2022 at 7:21
  • @chrisneilsen which as Journeyman said, not working for SE anymore, and hence the change of approach. So we should be thankful, and hope for a better future. :)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jul 26, 2022 at 7:24
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    Well - in a positive sense, its too late. Stuff was really bad. Now its mostly trying to fix the leftover issues of the past. I posted it because there was a real prospect of someone looking at it (and was hoping it was an oversight), someone did and its fixed.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 26, 2022 at 7:28

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