Dish runs on coffee and goodwill.
Dish, Satellite, and every Dish client are free, open source, ad-free, and analytics-free. No paywalled features, no upsells, and no plans for any of that. Donations are what keep them true.
GitHub Sponsors
RecommendedMonthly sponsorship, processed by GitHub. Lowest fees, no platform cut. The most stable way to support Dish month after month, and the only one that GitHub matches dollar-for-dollar through the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund where eligible.
Open GitHub Sponsors →Ko-fi
Tip jar. Buy us a coffee, no account required. Ko-fi takes 0 % on one-time tips, so every dollar reaches the project.
Open Ko-fi →Buy Me a Coffee
Quick one-time gift or a monthly membership. Card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Great if you don't have a GitHub account.
Open Buy Me a Coffee →What your donation actually pays for
- Hosting. dish.tinkernorth.com, tinkernorth.com, and every signed-installer mirror. AWS isn't free, even at our traffic scale.
- Code-signing certificates. Windows SmartScreen only plays nice because we pay for an EV certificate every year. The same goes for the Apple Developer Program account for the upcoming macOS client.
- Google Play developer fee. A one-time $25 fee plus the time required to keep the Play listing compliant with every new policy round.
- Hardware testing. Phones across the Android version range, gaming PCs spec'd at different tiers, controllers we benchmark against in the 15-controller comparison.
- Time. Honest answer: most of it. Dish is a nights-and-weekends project. Donations let me say "yes" to working on it instead of taking on extra consulting.
Donation FAQ
Where does the money actually go?
Code-signing certificates (Windows EV), the Google Play developer fee, hosting (S3 + CloudFront for dish.tinkernorth.com and the apt/dnf/AUR repos), the eventual Apple Developer Program account for Dish for macOS, domain renewals, and the time I'd otherwise spend taking contract work instead of shipping Dish.
Is TinkerNorth a registered non-profit?
No. TinkerNorth is an independent maker, so donations are not tax-deductible as charitable contributions in any jurisdiction. They're treated as gifts. If you need a receipt for accounting purposes, email privacy@tinkernorth.com and we'll send one.
Which platform should I use?
GitHub Sponsors if you can. It takes 0 % platform fees on individual sponsorships, makes recurring support trivial, and is eligible for matching during certain campaigns. Ko-fi is great for one-off tips. Buy Me a Coffee works well if you'd rather pay with Apple/Google Pay and don't have a GitHub account.
Do sponsors get anything special?
Nothing functional. Every feature, every release, every privacy guarantee is the same for sponsors and non-sponsors. What you do get is a shout-out in the release notes for the major versions, optional listing on the press page, and the knowledge that you're directly funding a free-as-in-freedom project.
Can my company sponsor?
Yes. GitHub Sponsors supports both individual and organization accounts, and we can invoice for one-off support if your finance team needs that. Email privacy@tinkernorth.com and we'll set it up.
I can't donate. How else can I help?
Star the dish-android and Satellite repos on GitHub (real discovery signal), file good bug reports, contribute a PR, write a blog post or YouTube video, or just tell a friend who's been hunting for a wireless gamepad solution.
Can't donate? You can still help.
- ⭐ Star the Satellite repo and the Dish for Android repo on GitHub. It genuinely moves the needle for discovery.
-
File good bug reports. A reproducible issue with a Wireshark capture or a Crashlytics ID is worth ten "doesn't work" threads. -
Tell a friend. A single tweet, post in r/cloudygamer, or YouTube short is worth a lot. -
Contribute. Pull requests welcome on every repo. See CONTRIBUTING.mdin any of them. Translations are particularly easy to land. Dish for Android already supports six locales and adding a new one is a single JSON file. -
Cover Dish. Journalists, reviewers, and content creators: the press kit has logos, screenshots, key talking points, and pre-cleared copy.
Thank you. Every dollar, every star, every shared link. They all add up. ~Emir