[Pidgin] #3066: We need a functional donations page.

[Pidgin]

#3066: We need a functional donations page.
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 Reporter:  kstange             |       Owner:  kstange
     Type:  task                |      Status:  closed
Milestone:  Completed Web Site  |   Component:  webpage
  Version:  2.1.1               |  Resolution:  out of date
 Keywords:  donations           |
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Changes (by MarkDoliner):

 * status:  new => closed
 * resolution:   => out of date


Comment:

 I'm going to close this. Please read on for the my reasons.

 Pidgin is assisted by a US registered non-profit organization called
 Instant Messaging Freedom, Inc. https://imfreedom.org/ It was founded by
 Pidgin developers and former Pidgin developers to help with lawsuits, hold
 copyright for people who may not wish to hold it themselves, pay legal
 fees, pay contractors for design, development, etc, and to optionally
 accept donations. In practice IM Freedom doesn't do a whole lot. Our
 internet hosting is generously provided by Network Redux
 (http://www.networkredux.com/), !SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/),
 and I believe Steadfast (https://steadfast.net/). Software Freedom Law
 Center has generously assisted with various legal bits for free, when
 needed. We haven't had legal problems in many years. We haven't seen a
 need to pay designers or developers recently (with one exception, which
 I'll talk about below). IM Freedom ''does'' accept mentor stipends from
 Google Summer of Code, and because of that, and because we have very low
 costs, we don't really need donations.

 The one exception is Tomasz Wasilczyk. He was a developer who was already
 with the project. A large company decided to donate money to us so that we
 might pay him to improve Pidgin, libpurple, Finch, and now Adium. This is
 going well and everyone seems happy with it. We are in the process of
 doing a second payment to him now for additional work.

 There's a question of, if we were to accept donations, what would we use
 them for? We could possibly pay for more development. This can be
 difficult... we existing developers have little bandwidth to adequately do
 code reviews. Tomasz doesn't need close code reviews because he's been
 working with the project for a few years and he does good work. It would
 be hard for us to hire someone new to the project because they would need
 lots of oversight, which we may not have time to provide. Our existing
 developers tend to not have time themselves to do work for pay. I don't
 think we have a strong need to pay for additional hosting services. I
 don't think we have a strong need to pay for design or artwork.

 Perhaps after Tomasz completes his additional work he'll desire to
 continue, and perhaps then we could request donations for a specific set
 of tasks to work on. Or perhaps someone else will come along who will
 desire to do work and propose a price.

 But for now I don't see a strong need for us to accept donations.

 All that being said, if you '''really''' want to donate, you may do so by
 making a donation to the IM Freedom !PayPal account using this page:
 https://imfreedom.org/donate.php

 Note that !PaylPal deducts a percentage-based transaction fee. I do not
 know the exact amount, but I believe it's less than 5%.

 Also consider donating to these other great causes, which have more
 bandwidth for using donations than we do:
 * Electronic Frontier Foundation
 * Software Freedom Law Center
 * Electronic Privacy Information Center
 * Free Software Foundation

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/3066#comment:17>
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