GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 724368
Add the ability to donate/buy
Last modified: 2015-09-20 12:21:01 UTC
Guys, It would be awesome and really good to have support for donations and buys. One could use a package and donate directly to the project. One could buy packages if they're for sale in 3rd party repos. This would enable a great app store and would be FOSS friendly. The donation/buy feature could integrate various payment methods: - bitcoin - paypal - flattr Just posting this bug so we can discuss it and think about it.
This is post 3.12 material at this point, and it needs very careful consideration, before we a) make it very easy for people to take a financial hit (however small) and b) give software projects the impression that there is a revenue stream that they can rely on going forward. Also, which ever choice of payment methods we make, we'll align ourselves with a (small) number of commercial entities, and leave out others.
(In reply to comment #1) > a) make it very easy for people to take a financial hit (however small) Please clarify.. > b) give software projects the impression that there is a revenue stream that > they can rely on going forward. Well, I see it as giving people the oportunity to give back a little for everything we receive. > Also, which ever choice of payment methods we make, we'll align ourselves with > a (small) number of commercial entities, and leave out others. We could make it open and let financial organizations and institutions to add support for their API. Maybe do one or two in order to show them how. I think we could start by supporting the open options. IMHO, bitcoin and litecoin and Ripple are some of those. Then, maybe the very popular ones, like Paypal or something?
When I talked to Allan Day about this back in 2013, he mentioned the idea of using a Flattr-like model, where one would simply specify an amount to donate monthly and that amount would be distributed among the installed FLOSS software using internal logic. This would be a very user-friendly, effort-free way for people to back the projects that they rely on. Something like this is a necessity for a thriving free software ecosystem. Right now, for the majority of developers, making free software doesn't have a viable business model.
It is interesting to see that this has not been discarded. I agree with this being a necessity. Also, I think distros would become viable for privative software as well; wich, in turn, would bring more users that would get exposed to free software as well. Enabling business is good, IMHO.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 708269 ***