Since 2011, Orthanc has been a trusted, open-source DICOM server for thousands of clinics, researchers, and software vendors worldwide. Today, it remains actively maintained by Sébastien Jodogne and the Orthanc Team, who continue to support the community and deploy Orthanc in clinics and small practices every day.
But here’s the reality: Orthanc is used by thousands, yet sustained by just 10 regular donors and the Orthanc Team’s customers.
Until recently, 75% of our donations came from a single supporter—who can no longer continue. Now, we need your help to keep Orthanc strong and accessible for everyone.
Why Your Support Matters ?
Orthanc is more than just software - it’s a shared resource for medical imaging. Your donation ensures: Continuous development and reliability for all users Free, open access for clinics, researchers, and vendors Community support and knowledge sharing
Would it be indelicate to ask how large the funding gap is that you need to cover and what type of expenses need to be covered (operating expenses, project work)?
Since UCLouvain is providing most of the server infrastructure, more than 99% the donations are actually used to pay our manpower.
To give you a figure, here’s an extract of a message I wrote one year ago on Linkedin. Note that this does not cover Sébastien’s work:
I have spent around 900 hours in 2024 working on Orthanc and its plugins, as well as providing support for the community.
The great news is that although I have been working 900 hours on free software, I did not work for free: all these hours have been paid!
Around 450 hours have been paid by donations received on Open Collective, which also supported some of Sébastien’s work,
around 100 hours have been funded directly by customers who needed a feature or a bug-fix,
and around 350 hours have been funded by unused hours from our customers’ support contracts.
Last year, 75% of donations went to Orthanc.team and 25% went to Sébastien. And we have just lost 75% of the donations so we basically lost revenues for 450 hours of work per year or half the time I was spending on Orthanc.
The situation is not critical at all but the community needs to understand that we might be more focused on our customers in the near future or don’t be surprised if we ask the community to fund the features they need.
Having a single donor covering 75% of all donations was an anomaly anyway. With more than 2000 downloads per day[1], we thought that more people would realize that it is in their best interest to participate to the funding of a tool they use everyday.
BTW, thanks for your donation !
Alain
around 2000 from Docker and around 200 Win64 installers ↩︎
Continuous development and reliability for all users
or half the time I was spending on Orthanc.
!