Recently a community developer released a wireless driver patch that allows, among other things, packet injection. The developer is requiring a donation of no fixed amount to receive the software. It does not reside in the usual repositories. Agree or disagree with the reasons for this it is not the only model for receiving donations I've seen.

Another major break-through piece of work in this community was fral's fMMS. Frals requested donations on his blog and released the software into the repositories. This worked for me. I got the software (started with version 0.32) and he got a donation.

A lot of what is done in this community is based on trust. We trust that there was a non-payment situation with this developer and the packet-injection feature requestor. I am tickled to see absolutely no one called this into question. I believe the developer should trust that this community will donate for his work if they have it, use it and see the value of it. But I may be damning the developer to a life of uncompensated work with this attitude.

I throw this out for discussion here so as to not bog down the wireless driver thread any more than it already is with discussion of donation models, payment schemes and the like.

So, how to compensate our hard working developers?

Get a job?

good to see grumpy guts joined in the conversation....
(Edit, not aimed at tzs, just in case you thought!!)

Maybe in China!

develop in Qt and port your app to android/symbian/iOS. maemo is not the place to be if you want to make money. meego is another story, but that marketplace still has yet to be defined.

Perhaps of interest, old thread about a proposed integrated donation system for community apps from maemo-dev mailing list:

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...ry/023980.html

edit: accidentally linked to reply not OP. fixed

How about setting up a fund and paying developers for each version that gets promoted to the extras repo a value that is decided based on the fund's finances and how many packages are being promoted each month?

@OP: I did consider the possibility that he was BS'ing us all, and for all we know, he coded the driver, got countless amounts of money, and has a millions-a-year paying job. But either we give the benefit of the doubt to everyone, or we apply the same standard to everyone, and spend every forum post including paragraphs of "now if you're bullshitting, and ____ is actually the truth, then ...". There's a time and a place for such discussion, and this is a good enough place, but unless someone want to take their hacking skills, track down lxp and find out if his situation is really what he says it is, there's little point in just saying "but it's possible you're lying". The people who can maturely contemplate each possibility (instead of just jumping on one or the other) rarely need to tell each other that X-possibility-is-possible.

As for payment options, I like Tiago's fund idea - though some damn good, optified, and stable apps don't make it out of devel... I suppose it could be insentive though.

However, I don't think many people would donate to the fund... Or like an equal distribution scheme (I think it's a great idea, but people might object on the grounds of wanting to donate do a specific project - though they can donate out-of-fund of course, but that's the point. You need enough people donating in-fund for it to be viable. At the end of the day, I like the standard model. Software in repos, donate links for those who want to donate. If the fund model can be implemented, it's a wondeful idea, but it needs to keep momentum, and have some form of accountability and transparancy that can be enforced.

I would go for the fund / trust idea. Perhaps joint thing with Meego? (Clearly needs some detailed thinking)

Good, finalized and polished apps / drivers / ? would be awarded ie. four times per year. It would create healthy competition but would allow not-so-ready apps to be developed and distributed also. And would give the dev the opportunity to ask for a donation.

in the case of wifi patch; he is not really asking for a donation but a payment

Errm, isn't there already a system for paid-for apps called Ovi store?

I dont' have an issue with paying for software which I am going to use, and where the software does what I want, and is of good quality ie. doesn't crash frequently, is attractive, and works without killing the battery in an hour or so..

I have bought licences for Gravity and BestProfiles on symbian, and Wayfinder, and Sygic on Maemo for example.