Reader Power: FOSS Force’s 2026 Independence Drive

New writers, expanded coverage, no trackers, no paywall — our 2026 Independence Drive is your chance to help keep it that way.

The FOSS Force 2016 Independence Drive — which we’ll be calling the 2026 Independence Drive from here on out — kicks off today on GoFundMe, and we’re asking you to help keep independent FOSS journalism alive and growing.

Two years ago, we stopped running Google Ads — or any other ads that track you — and moved to a mix of a sponsorship program available for selected open source companies and organizations, as well as affiliate ads that only pay us if you make a purchase. That’s been good for your privacy and for page performance, but it hasn’t been enough to pay the bills. Affiliate income has been modest at best, and while we do have some sponsors, we’ve treated sponsorships more like an afterthought than a real revenue stream. That changes now: this drive also includes a renewed push for our sponsorship program.

This year’s inaugural 2026 Independence Drive will run for a full month, and we’re setting a clear goal: we’re looking to raise at least $12,000 on GoFundMe to help cover our yearly operating costs and keep FOSS Force independent.

If you’ve been reading us over the last year or so, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve expanded our coverage. Notably, in 2025 we added three writers who’ve quickly become integral to what we do:

Larry Cafiero is back. You might remember that he was a prolific writer with us until about a decade ago. He brings to the table a long history with daily newspapers (remember them?), as well as years of experience handling press relations at the popular Southern California Linux Expo. Since returning to FOSS Force, he’s been writing our popular FOSS Force Distro of the Week reviews.

Jack Wallen, a well-known tech writer whose work also appears at ZDNet, The New Stack, and elsewhere, has been delivering our FOSS Force App of the Week column. And Marco Fioretti has been bringing his Eurocentric perspective to our pages, widening our view of free and open source software beyond the U.S.

Your support in this drive will help us do more of that work. We want to expand coverage from Cafiero, Wallen, and Fioretti and add new writers for expanded coverage, so we can tell more FOSS stories, dig deeper into the issues, and cover more of the projects and people you care about. Over the last year we’ve also put more focus on what’s happening at the organizations that sit at the center of open source and free software, and we’d like to increase that coverage as well. That kind of reporting takes time, attention, and money.

The 2026 Independence Drive is our way of funding that work without going back to invasive ads or putting up a paywall. Our long-term plan is simple: make this Independence Drive an annual event and combine reader support from these drives with our sponsorship program to fully fund FOSS Force. The goal is to pay the writers, pay the bills, and stay independent.

This is where you come in. If FOSS Force has helped you keep up with what’s happening in free and open source software, introduced you to a new distro or app, or given you context you didn’t get anywhere else, we’re asking you to step up and support the work. A one-time contribution through our GoFundMe — whether it’s $5, $25, $50, $100 or more– makes a real difference for a small publication like ours, and moves us closer to that $12,000 goal. We don’t have a corporate owner to fall back on; what we have is you.

We’ll keep you posted on our progress as the 2026 Independence Drive continues, but this is the moment when it counts most. Please click through to our GoFundMe page, chip in what you can, and help us prove that a small, reader-supported FOSS publication can not only survive, but grow.