Re: Community donations?
 

I see nothing wrong with putting up a donation site. I think it give a developer an incentive. I am glad they are giving me something I can use and I happy to show my appreciation.

I have one myself, am I begging for money? I merely have a way for people to show appreciation. I would guess I received about $300 in the last three years I have had a paypal account. I must say its interesting the people in places around the world that find what you do useful. Suddenly you get like 5 donations from Russia, because someone took what you did and blogged about it.

http://tablethacker.com/wp/?page_id=70&lang=en-us

I have links to both Fanoush and Gnuite which I think is the correct thing to do.

The argument then becomes well, you mostly porting KDE so if they donate for KDE, shouldn't I send money to KDE. Well, KDE is made up of all kinds of software, how could I possibly find a way to donate a few cents to 100 pieces of software.

I look at it like this, I am not a developer, but I am making opensource software available on this platform. If you feel as though you want to donate to me, cool, if not, cool.

In the past I had my 810 stolen. This community donated the entire price through multiple donations in a few hours. I did not ask for this. and I promptly returned all that money. if you look at the bottom of penguinbait.com it says and I quote This community is great, and more than willing to help an active member in need. I have used that money to donate to others like Fanoush and Gnuite, and I have made small purchases on bt-gps for my n800. Most recently I used it to send a small donation to a community member in need.

I personally see nothing wrong with setting up donations links on your project page or homepage. However I am not sure that should be organized on maemo.org? I supposed if someone wanted to setup a wiki with links to a project page for a developer, however I supposed this could be abused and could confuse people into thinking these were somehow certified by maemo in some way.

I think its probably best to let people do their own donate buttons. if you want to donate, I think its up to you to do some hunting?

Re: Community donations?
 

I think you're talking more about sponsorship... Donation in this context means just a sign of appreciation, not footing the bill (that's what a sponsorship would be, right ?). Just like when you offer someone a beer, it's not about the monetary value :)

Re: Community donations?
 

I also have a donation button on my website; I never got any donations from it, but that's ok... I think most of the people around here do what they do more for fame than for money :) ;)

And fame can be valuable too. It turns out that people giving "thanks!" on talk.maemo.org can actually have monetary value; this affects your karma, and good karma means you get considered for device discounts and Summit sponsorship. You can even run for the Council, and once on the council, you can rule maemo.org with an iron fist, subjecting the peons to your will! Mwahahahaha!

Re: Community donations?
 

...and the chicks. Tell 'em about the Maemo Council groupies qole. :eek:

Re: Community donations?
 

Um. Yeah. Groupies. I don't think any of the handful of female maemo.org members (the MaemoGrrls?) would be interested in being groupies of me or anyone else in the community....

Maybe when Nokia gets to Step 5 and all the teenagers have Maemo devices.

I'll be an old man by that point. But Leonard Cohen still has women chasing him, no?

Re: Community donations?
 

Cool did it.

Re: Community donations?
 

Lcuk did a fund drive for himself at one point.

I have this crazy idea that voluntarism is an spectre haunting the world (ok, I've been reading the Communist Manifesto) and it could do something like overthrow capitalism (which I don't actually hate). So rewarding voluntarism by a voluntary contribution might be a revolutionary act!

I don't like the Paypal company, but some sort of general fund button should be put prominently somewhere, and the council or some other shadowy force should decide what to do with the money, and put information near the button linking to an explanation of how the money is spent.

Re: Community donations?
 

I'll always be your groupie, qole! <3

In lcuk's case it's quite different, imo. However, I'll address this as part of my response with the next statement:

Very true, but how is this relevant to the Maemo Community? Don't take me wrong, I'm not trying to be a jerk here, just playing the devil's advocate role. How, in a Community based around a £499 device[1], that runs "free software", and currently has no platform to reward commercial applications by enabling the easy licensing and distribution of specifics apps.

If you wish to donate, go for it, most developers have their own donation button on their own page. If, on the other hand, this thread is a substitute to try and fulfill the lack of an App Store, where people can actually purchase stuff, well, I'm pretty sure this will arrive quite soon.

What I'm trying to say: donations are completely different from trying to pay people who need to make a living. Let's please not confuse the two.

[1]: Yes I know, the other devices are cheaper, and you can get discounts, etc.

Re: Community donations?
 

No, this thread had nothing whatsoever to do with the app store. It was started by me - and a) I'm not a developer, and it's highly unlikely I ever will be, and b) I never so much as held an iphone, let alone visited the app store (I only know it exists because of the advertising).

It was started by me because I've come from other platforms (palm, symbian and SE OS) where it's common to make a small donation for good free software. Not the sort of money that will enable people to live, more the sort of donation that would buy you a beer. It's what I'm used to, and as a non-developer, I appreciate being able to say 'thank you'. But my experience here is that a lot of work is done not by individuals but groups. I kind of assumed there'd be a way of 'tipping the community' for projects like that.

I didn't mean to start a system wide debate. Sorry!

Re: Community donations?
 

Kind of off-topic, but are Yodude and somedude related in some way :D:D:D