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Why don't you accept donations?

github.com

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Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#61

Post by zamadatix »

Kwpolska wrote: post #43
faet wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of how you access it you just take what you've been paid and add it to 'other income' when filing your taxes. If you're getting "big" donations, stripe or paypal will send you a k1 if you make > 20k. Otherwise there are not really any other administrative things to worry about.

And what if you’re not in the US? The author of uBlock is in Quebec (or so says their GitHub profile), and various jurisdictions might have different rules on donations.

For anybody who needs a FAQ about where the donation button is the absolute worst case difficulty for any jurisdiction is calling an accountant to have them do it for you.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#62

Post by version_five »

snarf21 wrote: post #8
smnrchrds wrote: post #6

> no donations = no expectations No donations should result in no expectations , but unfortunately all sorts of people will have all sorts of expectations from you when you release an open-source project, donations or not.

I've done a similar thing with a few past employers after I've moved on. "Hey, can you explain this code to the new person?". In some cases, I'd be glad to do a 1 hour call or whatever. They frequently ask me to submit a bill for my time and I always refuse. I don't want to turn into some kind of staff augmentation and be at their beck and call "because they are paying". Way better to think of it as a gift and I get…

I generally would do the same thing. I'm amazed at all the hostility towards this. And most importantly, it doesn't read to me like you're being taken for a ride. Much better to help if you want, dictate your terms, generate good will and maintain the relationship etc than get a few hundred dollars, unless you're actually trying to make a living that way. Even from a purely selfish perspective, long term you're approach will serve you much better than trying to be transactional about ever interaction you have. And obviously you could always just say no if you didn't want to do it.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#63

Post by tkiolp4 »

zamadatix wrote: post #61
Kwpolska wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if you’re not in the US? The author of uBlock is in Quebec (or so says their GitHub profile), and various jurisdictions might have different rules on donations.

For anybody who needs a FAQ about where the donation button is the absolute worst case difficulty for any jurisdiction is calling an accountant to have them do it for you.

Accountant = administrative workload. At least for me, so I imagine that may be the case as well for the author of ublock.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#64

Post by jader201 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #6

> no donations = no expectations No donations should result in no expectations , but unfortunately all sorts of people will have all sorts of expectations from you when you release an open-source project, donations or not.

I think the sentiment here is really:

No donations = no obligations

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#65

Post by munificent »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #57
snarf21 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a similar thing with a few past employers after I've moved on. "Hey, can you explain this code to the new person?". In some cases, I'd be glad to do a 1 hour call or whatever. They frequently ask me to submit a bill for my time and I always refuse. I don't want to turn into some kind of staff augmentation and be at their beck and call "because they are paying". Way better to think of it as a gift and I get…

sounds more like you are uncomfortable billing your market value, like most of us - you should charge at least a day’s worth of your old (or current) salary for one hour of this kind of on-demand work. If they don’t want to pay, that’s great, it means it really wasn’t that important after all…

No, there is real psychological research behind this.

If you charge people for something, it kicks their perception of the act into a different category. That in turn effects how they think about the interaction and what their sense of entitlement and expectations are in ways that can be counter-intuitive.

A famous related study is: https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-wha...

They found that when daycares fined parents for picking up their kids late, the result was parents picking them up even later. Because, without the fine, parents treated the pick-up time as a moral/social obligation that they did not want to uphold. Once the fine was introduced, they treated this as a simple financial transaction where if it's worth it to pay the extra to pick them up later, why not?

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#66

Post by wolverine876 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #6

> no donations = no expectations No donations should result in no expectations , but unfortunately all sorts of people will have all sorts of expectations from you when you release an open-source project, donations or not.

> No donations should result in no expectations

Let's not take to a literal extreme the OP's simplified expression. It's a matter of degree, like almost everything in life.

Money is not the only source of responsibility. Most responsibilities in life are not a consequence of payment - from one perspective, payment-for-services exists to fill gaps in other responsibilities, to create artificial responsibility.

In gorhill's situation, speaking generally from my perspective (and not for gorhill), payment would seem to increase responsibility but it would not be absolute: People shut down for-profit businesses all the time. Users could be paying for gorhill's expenses in creating the existing software, which would imply no future obligation. And lack of payment doesn't eliminate responsibility: If you tell people you are going to do something, and they depend on you, you have some responsibility. Did gorhill promise to maintain it forever? No, but they aren't providing software for use today only; it's not like watching a TikTok video; software assumes longer-term use.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#67

Post by binwiederhier »

approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts.

A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of ad blockers, but it certainly didn't help.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#69

Post by bern4444 »

binwiederhier wrote: post #67
approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts. A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of…

It would be a lot easier if websites and advertisers actually worked to naturally integrate ads in a way that wasn't obtrusive.

Massive banners at the top, auto playing videos, throwing off the page layout etc are all terrible ad experiences that dominate.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#70

Post by fartcannon »

binwiederhier wrote: post #67
approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts. A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of…

Greed doesn't stop. It doesnt say, 'this, but no more. our shareholders have enough'.

We'd be here with or without as blockers. It would just be worse without.

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