Have a look on Organic Maps (https://organicmaps.app) or OSMAnd for example (https://osmand.net/).

BTW I hope any project won’t increase the Z version only by including Dependabot commits, it would be insane. Release must be documented, tested, with CHANGELOG updated. If some maintainers just accept Dependabot commits without checking, move away. That’s just simple crappy auto-merge.

Nice idea 👍

Whatever the solution behind is, if you have the resources, move to something self-hosted. Open core or not, if that topic matters to you, you might need something you can own and control. BTW, have a look on Forgejo, Codeberg and Gitea: these are the solutions I see when people look for something FLOSS, not open core, and maybe self-hostable.

It depends of the project in fact. You should reach the community and maintainers by joining them in their Discord / Slack / Matrix / whatever. They may be able to help you.

You can create first an issue, asking for improvements and create a discussion airy the maintainers so as to know which languages are not managed yet and if they are interested in new support. Explains also why you can bring good translations (e.g. native speaker, teacher, etc). It sill help to bring confidence.

Then create a pull / merge request with the updated files. For example, strings.xml ob Android, .strings in iOS, etc. But beware, localisation is not only a matter of translations. You may have also to support new languages and formats for figures, currencies, or dates for example.

Do not use translations services. Project maintainers are able to use them, and in plenty of cases the translations are not good at all or loose details.

I would have said in fact Matrix or XMPP-based solutions but it seems you already have spotted them. Maybe Mattermost?

It seems yet Bluesky has an Android app according to their GitHub repository (https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app). However indeed nothing mentioned about F-Droid ; maybe some alternative Mastodon clients can also deal with Bluesky?

Very interesting topic in fact, I am not sure a unique and perfect solution exists.

In fact, it depends to how much you earn, how matter does for you the project, how big it is, etc. It is a question of feelings after all.

For example you may want to donate $20 one time to a useful tool you use, but for an app you enjoy using which match your own values you may want to send each year $50. But for some people it is complicated to give money, they need to satisfy their own needs before and people don’t have all the same incomes.

FMPOV, if the project is “just a tool” it can be a $20 one shot. If I use the software daily, it can be $50 per year. Maybe more if I feel it will help.

About the transaction medium, it depends. Projects can use Liberapay, others PayPal or Open Collective, or also in-app purchases. I don’t use cryptocurrencies because of the transactions fees.

Hope it helps!