On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Manu Sporny <[email protected]> wrote: > A deeper discussion of the social concerns and solutions with > integrating donations and fundraising into Debian packages can be found > here: > > http://lists.debian.org/deity/2013/06/msg00054.html
I thought this was pretty shallow, but anyway: My personal opinion is that while many projects have means of accepting donations most of the time its not as easy to discover or to use. "Donating" to projects which are not free-to-use is a lot easier as the same interface over which you discover this incredible masterpiece of a project is also the place where you find how to channel money to it – simply because you have to pay for it before you use it. And I am not talking about money exclusively here: Some projects have licenses encouraging buying the developer a beer if you see her/him, to send a postcard, to donate to favorite entity, … all of which isn't that accessible if you aren't highly determined to find it. As a distribution we work hard on making the best software available via an easy interface, we collect screenshots, reviews and votes for them (in various way with various states of completion in various downstreams) so I believe its in some sense our responsibility to also collect the information of how to show appreciation for the hard work of everyone involved in this project. That Debian is able to collect and deliver appreciations to developers via a simple interface was proven in 2010 with thanks.debian.net (the original is gone) which was like the best idea since sliced bread. :) [I know that others didn't like the "spam" – so much for uncontroversial] So I don't believe Debian should be the entity actually collecting (at least) the more physical/dangerous forms of appreciation, this is really something the projects itself have to work out, but we are good at collection metadata and I think many would appreciate being able to appreciate more easily. This especially means though, that it must be very very very clear who is the receiver of the appreciation. I would personally be surprised if the maintainer of package XYZ is getting a share via "apt-donate xyz '5 coins'" (I use this interface now just for brevity). She/he is doing a lot of work for sure, but I appreciate the software, not that it is packaged with this. That I can get this software easily while using Debian is something the whole project is responsible for, not just the person who happens to maintain this specific package, so appreciation for the package itself should go to the project as a whole. Best regards David Kalnischkies -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAAZ6_fBEh6grc=u=+xoghj_fmqlo3nf0enx2y9jkocumk2g...@mail.gmail.com
