This is the discussion thread of the Brainstorm proposal Donations are not simplified and not enough emphasized

Yesterday there was another community project asking for donations (and having trouble to get them via PayPal in Russia): OMWeather
http://tabletui.wordpress.com/2009/1...w-and-support/

lcuk asked for donations for liqbase few weeks ago.

What other real example do we have right now in the Maemo community?

I think a way of collecting the "Donate" buttons from all the projects that have them under the maemo.org umbrella would be sufficient. Maybe put it on the download page of the app? In the garage page? Both? Neither maemo.org nor Nokia should be responsible for collecting and distributing the money; they should just point to the donate button (probably paypal or some other such service).

Irrelevent aside first: When I lived in Moscow, I tried to use my Paypal account. As a result, my account was permanently frozen. I have never since then been able to use that email again, though it is my main address. the Paypal people are well, I was about to say idiots, but let's just say they are associated with eBay.

On the subject of donations, I don't see a big difference between donating time and donating money. Either donation is a good thing. People like me WANT to donate sometimes. It's not a matter of being rich; I'm far from rich. But it makes me feel good when I help a good cause, and I don't necessarily want to commit myself to giving time.

I think people are reluctant to ask for money; that's a common problem, and it is just wrong. Taking money is a way of building support for youur cause, whatever it is. And it's necessary.

And I think that the downloads area is a good place for the button; it should be very low key, especially if it's going to be in people's faces everytime they download; sometimes people are downloading ten or twenty programs; you don't want to hit them in the head twenty times in a row. They don't have to donate, they are just invited to donate if they want to.

Cheers to that.
I think that a standard, easy and non obtrusive way to have a project able to receive donations is a good thing.
There are lots of nice projects that are put on hold or discontinued because the developer(s) just need some extra cash to buy a cool and expensive gadget and needs to channel his free time in some other directions.

Here are some projects that i think need to be encouraged:

1) mplayer (is someone working on it?)
2) numpty-physics
... others more important then the one following....
99) mytube - for this one i'm sure the developer will be more then happy to receive a discount for n900

-Mihai

It seems to me that the donations to developers is a very good thing. Personally, I am willing to help the authors of apps which I use. The authors of the programs with Maemo Select should also be donaited by Nokia at the end of high-quality programs help the whole platform.


Nokia Money will be available on N900 to and can be a solution for donaiting developers?

Any solution that doesn't involve paypal would be very welcome from me. Could the Ovi store be used for this eventually?

[grammar police]It should be "not emphasized enough"[/grammar police]

As for the topic, yeah, I agree that it needs to be simplified a lot more, but how? That's the big question. I've always just done paypal for donations on my site, and I know hundreds of FOSS projects and distros that use paypal for donations. If you guys have ideas for simpler donation methods, I'm game.

Quim was right; there's a question of timing. Rewriting things like the app manager would require Harmattan or later. Whereas more modest things (e.g. Ovi store) could be fairly close to immediate. Adding, e.g. a donate button to the Garage could be of intermediate-range, since it doesn't require rewriting apps, let alone central apps.

Also, you can apparently vote for more than one solution. Winning here isn't zero-sum.

A point that I just realized: do we care about old devices? I have an n810 that's going to be my only NIT for the forseeable future, but I'd also like to easily donate.