Community donations?
 

I did a quick search, and didn't see anything come up about this. But (as ever) I'm thinking ahead to m future needs.

I'm familiar with 'donation-ware' from other platforms: the developer creates something, shares it freely, but leaves his/her paypal button handy, so that if you find the app or widget really useful, you can 'buy a beer' or whatever you think it was worth. As someone who really appreciates freeware, it's something I often do - I'd rather make a donation for good free apps than find myself struggling with a crippled shareware version.

But many of the things around here are co-developed by a number of people. That's part of the 'community' aspect of it. What does one do then?

My assumption is that there's probably a sort of 'community chest' for donations in gratitude for things that have been co-produced. Is there? And if so, where?

Or am I havering again?

Re: Community donations?
 

I don't think most of the community actually expect/take donations other than hardware...

Re: Community donations?
 

Ahh ok. My mistake. In other platforms, it's pretty common (or used to be) for developers to have a paypal button on their site for a thank-you donation.

Re: Community donations?
 

And it still is the case. There's plenty of websites which have "donate" buttons, some with better reasons than others.

That being said, I don't necessarily agree with the principle. "Pay me if you like it" is a crappy argument, and "Pay me because I need it" is even worse.

If a guy produces a good piece of software, it means he's good enough a coder and has enough of a brain to get a job. If he doesn't know how to turn his skills into something profitable, why would the community have to get the bill for that? I feel it really takes away something from the whole "Open" spirit, in a way that either you do something for free, and publicise it as such, or you charge for it, and do it from the start as well.

Anyway, back on topic: There's no such feature in the Maemo community. If people want to donate, they can. Either way, I don't support it.

Re: Community donations?
 

that is actually a really good idea, we should probably ask the big dogs of this forum to see what they think about this and how to implement that. And who wants to use it they are always welcome and I think this will actually bring lot of other developers who are not actively developing for maemo platform. Making maemo even better that what it is right now.

Re: Community donations?
 

Yerga, for example, does exactly this: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=314055&postcount=4

(I'd hit that donate button, but, alas, I don't have a means of actually getting that money to Paypal...)

Re: Community donations?
 

I believe it was proposed and there is a Brainstorm or task assigned already... I would look there first.

Edit: Dig upon this >> http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=30908

...and this >> http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...gh_emphasized/

Brainstorm, your vote counts. :)

Re: Community donations?
 

It's like a minor league baseball player putting a tip jar in front of his spot on the bench so others can help him make it to the big leagues.

I think if the right user is moved to reward an effort by an open source community member, they'll find a way to give back to the creator/developer whether there's a guitar case, baseball hat, or paypal link sitting on the ground next to them or not.

Things get complicated when you start to throw in financial compensation for something so many do for unselfish reasons.

Next thing ya know we'll be comparing how much flair each of us has. :D

Re: Community donations?
 

It seems to me that the way to encourage donations is to make the process as frictionless as possible, which means that the donation must be initiated from the application itself, not from somewhere else such as a website or application manager.

How about a standard library that can be used by developers of open source Maemo applications, so that they can add a menu option to their apps called "Thanks...".

When clicked, it displays a short blurb followed by two options:

• Send a brief message of thanks to the developer
• Make a donation to the developer using PayPal

By having a standard format for this, maybe users would get used to the idea that it's easy to reward the creators of apps that they use and enjoy.

Regards,
Roger

Re: Community donations?
 

A lot of very good programmers are out of jobs in the current environment.

Mike C

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

Re: Community donations?
 

AFAIK qole didn't get approached by drunk women at an Amsterdam bus stop.

That's the legend of [other Canadian member name omitted in case wife reads forum]... :D

Re: Community donations?
 

Thing I pondered about.. would people like a system where people can report hours used on making a maemo.org project/task and then people can choose to pay for those hours?

Re: Community donations?
 

For the maemo professionals out there, there has been some discussion about this.
Get yourselves involved in linkedin, and add yourselves to the maemo.org list.


http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_professionals

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...3656?page=last

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-birkett/16/550/41b

I have no idea whether I can make a living continuing my maemo development, the community very graciously gathered round the idea of with what I am attempting to build, hopefully this whole platform can become a commercial hotbed.

we have all the tools required to give businesses a stable mobile platform and from my experience job hunting have found at least 50-100 fulltime posts in all areas of the world for all different kinds of developers.

We (the maemo community) should be working together to find and fill these leads and help each other out to make maemo last for the next 10 years.

Re: Community donations?
 

I reached the stage in the 'ship yet?' thread of offering my body for an n900... but I don't think it's worth that much (my body, not the n900).

On topic, it would be good to see the platform become something big enough that people could make a living developing on it, but wouldn't that change its nature somehow?

Re: Community donations?
 

No sir. We sure are not except we are dudes.:D

edit: wow my #111 post. Something big is going to happen. and Sachin probably knows that in cricket if its 111 its either a sixer or bold. right sachin?

Re: Community donations?
 

I thought Nelson was usually not a good score to be on - usually a wicket.

Re: Community donations?
 

- Canadian Members
- Went to amsterdam
- Not Qole

That's not exactly a diverse range of people :D

Re: Community donations?
 

qwerty12, Finally you have your chance to be with a girl. :D:D:D

Re: Community donations?
 

What? No, there were countless other Canadians there.

I also had a nice local lady stop her bike and stroke my neck when the "Vampire Moth" bit/stung me. She seemed genuinely concerned.

Re: Community donations?
 

There is this Brainstorm proposal Donations are not simplified and not enough emphasized

Please propose and vote solutions. The related discussion thread is http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=354950