Software Donation in COVID-19
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are stepping up in unique ways to do their part fighting against the virus.
In times when office and coworking spaces are closed, we have no other solution than working from home.
As a nomad, I had the chance to work remotely before the sanitary crisis started. I worked from home, coffee places, and coworking spaces. So restricting myself to only working from home didn’t impact me much. Working from home is not that hard, but you need to be prepared and have the right tools. The key success factor is communication, and there are so many tools for it, such as Slack for chatting and exchanging information quickly, Zoom for video conferencing and meetings, tools like Miro for creative sessions, and last but not least a project management service accessible remotely. Many companies also need remote access to the intranet and a VPN. Unfortunately, not everyone has all these tools, and not all companies were ready to let their employees work from home.
With two of my friends, Farbod & Nasim, we realized that many companies building tools to enable remote working and studying, or even maintaining your physical and mental well being, were starting to donate their software to help the ones in need! Many products are now free or partly free to enable remote working and to avoid the spreading of COVID-19. Products like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, and Dropbox! Pretty amazing.
We are living in crazy times! Most of the time, during a crisis, we see money donation, supply donation, and food donation. For the first time, we are seeing software donations. People, startups, and corporations want to feel helpful. I am sure you also wanted to do something to fight COVID-19.
That is why, to support this movement and trigger other companies to do so, we decided to create Software Donation.
Software Donation is a website that collects all the software, tools, and services available to help those working and studying from home, COVID-19 research, and tools to help people stay healthy during the COVID-19 outbreak.
I personally worked on designing and implementing the Software Donation website. Also, because it is about donations, we made it an open source for anyone to contribute to. After the launch, we received more than 100 requests from companies ready to donate their software (including big companies like Codeacademy, Miro, and Typeform). Every day we keep receiving more donors and we are very proud of that. If you are working in any of these fields and you want to make a difference, donate your software now!
“Millions are stuck at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak in their cities. This platform helped us donate our app’s premium tier to help more people maintain their physical and mental health during these difficult times,” said Hunter Seide, founder of The Nomad Workout app and a donor on Software Donation.
Our goal is to see an emergence of software donation in the future, not only to help during crises, but also to help people in need, non-profits organizations, and even students!
In the meanwhile, stay home, stay safe, and be productive!
Sandoche is Co-founder & CTO of Madarra as well as indie maker of many products including Kanbanote, Revenual, Undesign, TextBlast, GitNews, etc.