Sponsor rightright.me!

Why I’m asking for sponsorships

I’ve spent the last few years building small, native, open-source tools at rightright.me. No ads, telemetry, nags, or upsells — and I want to keep it that way.

The math of free software

The tools I make are free because I think free is the right default for software like this — small, technical, useful to a few thousand people. Paid licensing doesn’t fit. Freemium doesn’t fit. Selling user data is unthinkable.

But “free” only describes what users pay. It doesn’t describe what the work costs. Every one of those downloads represents some fraction of an evening I spent on a feature, a bug, or a release. Multiplied across three products and several years, that’s real time — time I’d love to keep spending here, and time my family would also like a say in.

Sponsorship is the structure I’m choosing.

What I’m not doing

I’m not adding analytics. I’m not adding a paid tier that locks features behind a paywall. I’m not switching licenses. I’m not pivoting rightright.me into a SaaS. The values on the homepage — native first, open by default, well-finished, no dark patterns — are not negotiable, and sponsorship is precisely the model that lets them stay non-negotiable.

If sponsors fund the work, I don’t have to fund it through methods I’d be uncomfortable with.

What sponsorship gets you

Practically: continued maintenance of the tools you depend on, faster response on issues, and a name or logo in places that signal you helped. The full tier breakdown is on the sponsor page.

Less practically: you keep a small independent software shop alive in a market that increasingly doesn’t have room for them. That matters to me, and I suspect it matters to anyone reading this far.

What I commit to in return

Transparency. I’ll publish what I ship, monthly, on this blog. Sponsors should be able to see the work happening, not take it on faith.

Maintenance over novelty. Sponsor money goes to keeping existing tools alive before it goes to building new ones. Shiny new products are how solo shops collapse; boring upkeep is how they last.

Honesty about scope. I’m one person. I won’t promise enterprise SLAs or 24/7 support. What I will promise is that when you open an issue and you’re a sponsor, you go to the top of the queue, and I’ll tell you within a few days whether and when I can fix it.

If you’ve used this stuff sponsor rightright.me!

Thanks for reading. Back to shipping.