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I received my first donation on my open-source side project

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Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#41

Post by rglullis »

kd5bjo wrote: post #38
rglullis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not talking about hundreds or thousands of dollars here, are we? Do you get in trouble with the Tax Man because you tip your server at a restaurant or gives some spare change to the someone on the street?

Giving? No. Receiving and not reporting? Maybe, depending on local laws and how zealous the tax enforcer is. This probably falls into the category of "Not allowed, but too small to worry about." That works fine, until they decide to audit you for some other reason.

Sorry, I misread your original comment.

Sure, if the project is successful to the point of receiving significant amounts, having to report it becomes mandatory.

Speaking as someone with an open source project that started due a grant and that I'd love to turn into a full time job: If I were receiving so many donations that it would require me to spend time to report to the tax authorities, I'd put it on the list of "good problems to have".

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#42

Post by alpaca128 »

UltraSuperUser wrote: post #27
sneak wrote: post #20

It makes me sad to see developers donating time and effort to support an ecosystem (VSCode) built explicitly to spy on users and promote proprietary software. The fact that VSC's core is released under an open source license is irrelevant to the harm that is being done.

Do you really think any of what you just said will be effective to your target demographic without being far more detailed, containing any sort of sources, or while being this unnecessarily inflammatory? All the people you wish would care will scoff, dismiss the comment as being looney and that'll be that. You have to realize that, unfortunately, in every part of life, marketing matters. Got to make a message your au…

Not sure how it is inflammatory to state VS Code spies on users, when according to a GitHub issue[0] Microsoft has been refusing to clearly comply with GDPR for over 2 years now, with the only response being (paraphrasing) "just read the source code" when asked what kind of data is collected.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/47284

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#44

Post by veridies »

4lejandrito wrote: post #39

Congrats! I got my first GitHub Sponsor the other day and even though it is just $1 / month it made me feel like a rockstar. Also I got $3 on BuyMeACoffee a few months ago and it was wonderful. Keep up the good work.

I definitely agree. From a different perspective, I have a few free albums on Bandcamp under a Creative Commons BY-SA, just as a side project. Getting $5 or $20 here or there is really nice — it makes me feel like someone found my music worthwhile to them, which is a good feeling.

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#45

Post by offtop5 »

susam wrote: post #7

I have been running an open source MathJax-based mathematics pastebin[1] since 2012 and I had received 2 donations for it until recently. Then a mathematician tweeted[2] about it convincing others to send some donations. After that kind gesture by him, I received 3 more donations. So pretty sure I can't make a living out of donations. :-) But I still appreciate them because they help in covering a portion of the host…

I'm stupid , but what exactly do mathematicians do ?

I'd assume economists are a significant portion of them ???

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#46

Post by 4lejandrito »

veridies wrote: post #44
4lejandrito wrote: post #39

Congrats! I got my first GitHub Sponsor the other day and even though it is just $1 / month it made me feel like a rockstar. Also I got $3 on BuyMeACoffee a few months ago and it was wonderful. Keep up the good work.

I definitely agree. From a different perspective, I have a few free albums on Bandcamp under a Creative Commons BY-SA, just as a side project. Getting $5 or $20 here or there is really nice — it makes me feel like someone found my music worthwhile to them, which is a good feeling.

I can only imagine how you feel. I find music so much harder than programming and I feel incredibly happy when someone enjoys my guitar playing (I am just a beginner really). You must be really good.

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#47

Post by metahost »

susam wrote: post #7

I have been running an open source MathJax-based mathematics pastebin[1] since 2012 and I had received 2 donations for it until recently. Then a mathematician tweeted[2] about it convincing others to send some donations. After that kind gesture by him, I received 3 more donations. So pretty sure I can't make a living out of donations. :-) But I still appreciate them because they help in covering a portion of the host…

Was looking forward to using it but, it says my IP is blacklisted. :(

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#48

Post by bachmeier »

255kb wrote: post #34

I know this feeling, seeing people pay for your free software! It's very rewarding, and also a sign that some people got huge value from your hard work. Even if it's symbolic, or just enough to cover the server costs, it's what motivates me to continue. Still, I wish more companies would donate to support the massive amount of open-source software and libraries we all use every day. I understand that making a company…

> I understand that making a company pay for something free is a challenge.

I don't know how many times I've heard variants of this. "You can't monetize open source because companies won't pay for it." It's not that hard to get them to support the project if you sell something that's not available for free. It could be as simple as selling a special version of the documentation for $25. That's obviously not at the same level as dropping a $5000 donation, but it's more than zero, and it's a heck of a lot easier for an employee to ask them to pay $25 for a tool they need to do their work than to ask them to donate $5000.

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#49

Post by MayeulC »

UltraSuperUser wrote: post #27
sneak wrote: post #20

It makes me sad to see developers donating time and effort to support an ecosystem (VSCode) built explicitly to spy on users and promote proprietary software. The fact that VSC's core is released under an open source license is irrelevant to the harm that is being done.

Do you really think any of what you just said will be effective to your target demographic without being far more detailed, containing any sort of sources, or while being this unnecessarily inflammatory? All the people you wish would care will scoff, dismiss the comment as being looney and that'll be that. You have to realize that, unfortunately, in every part of life, marketing matters. Got to make a message your au…

Well, any piece of software that requires signing off copyright to a private entity gets a soft blacklist in my book. The project picked a license, asking for CLA is not playing on a level field.

I count the FSF as an exception here, since they provide additional guarantees with their CLA, and it is primarily for enforcement: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html

Re: I received my first donation on my open-source side project

#50

Post by yboris »

I've been trying to encourage more "Charityware" for software [0]. My software is free and open source (MIT license) [1] but I also sell it for $5 and donate $3.50 of every sale to a cost-effective charity. My goal is to increase donations to the charity, and asking people for donations wouldn't be as effective. My software now has generated almost over $9,000 in donations.

Personally, every purchase of my software feels rewarding. It's probably not as great as a regular donation, but it's a close second. Furthermore, since my software is pay-what-you-want (with a minimum of $5) people have been often giving more than the minimum. That really feels like a donation.

[0] https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...

[1] https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

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