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SourceForge Donation System for Projects
comforteagle writes "O'Reilly Developer News is reporting that SourceForge has begun a donations program for hosted projects in addition to the program which was for supporting the site. Apparently project admins have to opt-in to have the program setup for them, but it sounds like a pretty good idea. There's a 5% transaction fee, but that doesn't sound totally unreasonable. Perhaps a limit would be a good idea though." Sourceforge and Slashdot are both owned by VA Software Corp.
FUCK YOU!
Value Added Software? Their games are shite.
You're so gay that AIDS got a You test and it came back positive.
Will people pay for my open source sit on my ass project?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
There's a 5% transaction fee, but that doesn't sound totally unreasonable.
This is even less than what 2checkout charges. Not a bad deal at all and SourceForge gets a bit left over after processing fees.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I get a boner every time CNN plays that tape.
If you wish to help me in my quest for WORLD SLAVERY, please purchase a kalashnikov at your nearest kalashnikov store and HELP ME KILL ALL AMERICANS!!!
Good idea, but how many people will actually donate? Sounds more like shareware and not the "traditional" open-source we've come to love and appreciate. I can think of a few projects I wouldn't mind donating to, but that's the key word. A couple.
I'd hate to see what would happen the moment divvying the donations up among project members goes awry. How do you decide whose contribution deserves what portion? I'm not sure money is the right thing to toss into the OSS mix.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
What do i need sf for? just givem my paypal email and end of story.
.. like goatse.cx or tubgirl.com. Can you imagine what their bandwidth bills are with all of us linking to them?
I find it an interesting coincidence that a lot of small businesses pay about 5% when you make purchases with a credit card.
I'm not saying it is fair or unfair or even insensitive, but interesting.
Heck, a lot of charities will skim 60% off the top of donations just for canvasing etc. In this respect 5% sound quite reasonable.
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
Assuming it's really only a 5% transaction fee (the linked site states: "A few other tidbits of information about this new donation system: SF.NET is taking a 5% piece of the transaction fee," which seems to suggest that the transaction fee is larger than 5%), here is the breakdown between PayPal and SourceForge.
PayPal charges max 2.9%, plus $0.30.
If you want to donate $1.00 to your favorite Free Software project, the fee is 5 cents through SourceForge and 33 cents through PayPal.
If you want to donate $5.00, the fee is 25 cents through SourceForge and 54 cents through PayPal.
If you want to donate $10.00, the fee is 50 cents through SourceForge and 59 cents through PayPal.
If you want to donate $15, the fee is 75 cents through SourceForge and 74 cents through PayPal.
If you want to donate $20.00, the fee is $1 through SourceForge and 88 cents through PayPal.
PayPal is therefore a better solution for donations >= $15.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Even if I would like to redirect 100% to an organization, say, a couple months, still requires a valid paypal account's email address.
Not that I think I could bring donations, but just to experiment a while it would be useful to have a chance to re-donate without the mess of creating a paypal account (I code just for fun, I may change my mind later but right now that's what I would like to do: redirect a 100% just to see what happens).
Upon further investigation, I managed to locate this:
http://sourceforge.net/tos/donations.php
It seems that SourceForge is actually using PayPal to handle the donations. They're just taking 5% of PayPal's fee, at least that's how I read it, so they must have worked a deal with PayPal.
Some better information in the story would have been nice. As it was, I clicked the link to OreillyNet, which had a link to SourceForge's forums, where I had to read an entire post and then locate a link to SourceForge's Terms of Use, which then directed me to yet another page describing the Donations Terms of Use.
A lot of digging to find info about this new feature. You'd think, being a VA entity, that Slashdot would have spiced the story up with a few more relevant links!
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Umm..I can see the next step. You can opt-in for some sort of subscription through with you can get "support" through email by code maintainers.
It seems that SourceForge is actually using PayPal to handle the donations.
PayPal is available in 38 countries which is not few, but far from being ubiquitos.
In order to this business model be really successful there should be an international micropayment system which could be used easily by anyone on Earth.
'Twas the night before Goatse, when all through the house
Not a penis was stirring, not even with mouth;
The Giver [goatse.cx] was hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Goatse soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of anal-sex danced in their heads;
And Katz in his 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a fuck in the sack.
When up in my anus there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see Katz start to splatter.
Away to the bathroom I flew like a flash,
Tore open my anus and looked at the gash.
The moon in the glass had a vibrant red glow
Gave the lustre of sunset to my nutsack below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer!
With a little old driver, so lively and quickse,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Goatse.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, TACO! now, JAMIE! now, MICHAEL and TIMMY!
On, CHRISD! on HEMOS! on, PUDGEY and CLIFFY!
To the top of the ass! fronts to the the wall!
Now pound away! pound away! pound away all!"
As faggots that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with a hetero, mount the next guy,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of sex-toys, and Goatse pics too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The moaning and pawing of each little poof.
As I drew in my ass, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Goatse came with a bound.
He was dressed as a furry, from his head to his feet,
And his clothes were all tarnished with urine and shit;
A bundle of sex-toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a hooker just flapping his sack.
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His ass cheeks like roses, his cock like a cherry!
His cute little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his scrotum as white as the snow;
The stump of a blunt he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and was a bit smelly,
He shook, when he wanked like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him beat off himself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings with smelly big turds,
He layed a big log right under my nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like a fucking great missile.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight
"HAPPY GOATSE TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"
Bojay Iverson was here.
I am not sure how many of you are aware of numerous reports of paypal.com being a somewhat questionable company. While I have not had them cause me any trouble personally, I thought it worth mentioning. It seems some people have had paypal.com hold up in excess of $5000.00, to either get it back in a year, or not at all. If you read the forums, you get a real good idea about how horrible they really are, with ex-employees telling some very interesting stories. If any of this is true, I would hate to see SourceForge caught in the middle of something that could hurt them or its users.
It is preventing tomorrow it's so tough
It is a fanning horror it's so rough
It's not a pacifist
It's not a pacifist
It's not complaining or praising it's not fair
It is pretending to mind it doesn't care
It's not a pacifist
It's not a pacifist
Would you be?
It's taking your time
It doesn't matter what you feel
It's harder than steel
One day we'll find a reason why
I'm not sorry
It is aware of your thoughts you think in vain
It will start up a riot and release the pain
It's not a remedy
It's not a remedy
You will follow the orders of your king
You will bury the answer of this thing
It's not a remedy
It's not a remedy
Would you be?
CmdrTaco married to a human female, reports are that she does not have 46 chromosomes, however. Fent does display tendency to retardation. She also tell Taco of a desire to masturbate her female babies.
That's really gross. I'd sue you for it. Really.
to see a project allow those who donate to vote on what the money went towards.
I would have to vote for Perl/Python modules for GNU cash.
Sourceforge and Slashdot are both owned by VA Software Corp.
The microsoft empire will wallow below our open source empire. BUHAHAHHAHAHAH! Now, we just have to figure out how. *moves penguin figurines over a battle map* If we just attack right here...
While its nice that they always _mention_ there's a corporate slant in giving space to Sourceforge stories, it's still a bit disturbing that a whole community is serving the interests of the likes of VA - not to mention IBM, Novell, and whatever big company becomes Linux/GNU/Open Source vendors.
Nah, I don't really know if there's a solution. While the compromise seems to be working okay (at least in the server market), for how long will be people willing to work for free for IBM?
How much is hacker reputation really worth?
Good call. Sourceforge projects are life-blood to open source. Let's feed them.
"Project admins can decide if they want to give a portion of their proceeds to non-profits that support Open Source, such as the Open Source Initiative, Python, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Gnome Foundation, etc."
Does anyone has a complete list? Does it include KDE e.V. too?
Often the open-source stuff is better supported, more stable and has better features than the commercial software that it replaced. Two examples of this are VNC and Liberum (both SourceForge hosted projects).
VNC works much better for us than other commercial software and Liberum has completely replaced all of other helpdesk software due to its easy web interface and no need for a client install. A support person can clear a call while sitting on the desk of the person whose box they have just fixed.
If we gave even a percentage of the money that we saved due to these two products, it would run in the thousands of pounds.
Hear now, hear now!
Gather round ye trolls of slashing,
Come to listen to that fateful dotting.
With goatse dudes and hot grits flashing.
Tis a grand karma massacre we're plotting.
Extoll hear, ex troll here!
Extolling extrolling, we trumpet your arse,
Yet break wind from front and rear,
Perl,PHP,Python: these you cannot parse.
Lampstacks and lampshades come tumbling down,
Your platform by default is Win Thirty Two.
Linuxheads marching to the beat of the town,
In Soviet Russia the trolls comment you!
Who cares about Redmond and Research Triangle Park,
Those madhouses make us to laugh.
Who wants fat dollars when we can read fark?
And trade our sh*t on eBay and Half.
King troll-hack cmdrtaco even disclaims his disclaimers
while his minion editors still sleep half the day.
and post stories from thousands of spineless lamers
who have too much karma to ever get lai...
Meta-moderation be damned?
Just buy a subscription!
True trolls have all payed and planned,
To give us their fits of conniption.
The GNU Stallmans sound crappiest
At the end of the movie.
But what THOSE TROLLS SAID makes us happiest,
ESR's anti-Micro-taunt in RevolutionOS was so groovy.
"We're your worst enemy" has oft been said,
But Raymond speaks with a snarl,
And his trolling of the genuinely special ed.
Led us past many a crufty "Dear Darl".
SCO takes the cake this year my friends,
For biffing the basics of U.S. copyright law.
The lawyered system will find due motivation in the end,
Tangling with both tux AND Linus was Darl's fatal flaw.
Apple is a whole 'nother ball of wax,
Those powerbooks,ipods, and OSX really rock the house.
But pudge gives apple./. naysayers a thousand wacks.
Freedom of speech means nothing to that louse.
Weak of mind, and faint of brain,
Resort to comments of the ad hominem sort,
While commenters of ignorance feel no pain,
Those with long beards loathe the FreeBSD dying part.
Carolling, merrily, we give you to read,
ALLCAPS COMMENTS ON STORIES WE'VE NEVER SEEN.
More goodness than you've ever drank in or out pee'ed,
Await you with hot grits and Amidala Queen.
Will a troll ever troff?
This holiday, break a limb.
We wish your fingers fall off.
All eleven of them.
- ubiquitin, the self-proclaimed fookin Slashdot poet laureate
Note to ye fateful moderators, this year I achieved my first ever +5, Troll. Yes. You're welcome. Thank YOU. To accomplish this marvelous deed, I first climbed the mountain of +5 mod, and THEN was capped and crowned with that glorious label of insults gone right and good deeds gone bad: troll!
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
fraudulent corepirate nazi puppet PostBlock(tm) devise, as it never did/still doesn't, work?
When I checked around a couple of years ago, Paypal had the lowest transaction fee of any of the places that mere mortals can use for processing credit cards.
I've accepted a hundred or so payments thru PayPal; not one person I've dealt with had a bad experience and told me about it. A couple of people emailed me and said they did not have PayPal accounts and weren't going to get them because they "heard that PayPal is evil incarnate...". So they mailed me a check.
If you ask me, these people are being silly. They just sent a person they do not know (me), who is in another state or country, their checking account number. Thats like having unprotected sex. Oops I forgot this is slashdot and some of you may be unfamiliar with what that is - think of it as taking on a battle cruiser with your shields down.
There is nothing wrong with being a little careful with online payment systems. For example, I've tied my PayPal account to a throwaway checking account and credit card, not my main account and card. So if something does go wrong I can still make the mortgage payment at the end of the month while I get the snafu cleared up (no snafus yet). And when I get deposits into my PayPal account I immediately withdraw them into the checking account. It costs nothing to request withdrawal of funds.
paypal fee is 30 cents + 2.9%??
for a dollar donation that sucks!!!
e-gold charges 1% capped at 50cents.
so a dollar donation is a penny fee.
32X more fees for 1 dollar donation when using
paypal instead of e-gold!
mozilla foundation accepts e-gold.
Mailing cash worldwide can be a bad idea for the recipient (but a good idea for the recipient's post office, it seems). We've got another solution, but nobody likes to look at our (incredibly-low, IMO) spend & storage fees, because e-gold is grams, and they also must think about independent exchangers' fees once they've gotten though that.
e-gold fees http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/fees.htm
Anyway, if they get past all the admitted complexity of a new way to think about money, e-gold really-does work anywhere there's internet. I also really-do regularly offer Slashdot readers a free (small...) click of the stuff (just email me with an account number to try it). Surprisingly-few takers when I do this, though.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
<plug>BTW, check out my project on Sourceforge.</plug>
SourceSupport.org has been doing something like this for a while now.
I've been working on a project that is listed over at Source Support where they take it one step futher, The don't give the money to the developers until the project is completed.
Here is a clip from their FAQ...
1. What is SourceSupport.org?
SourceSupport.org provides a system to pay programmers, artists, content creators and just about anyone that can provide a solution to challenges submitted by users. For example, let's say that there is a large group of people out there that want 'Program X' ported over to 'Operating System Y'. First, someone submits the challenge on SourceSupport.org. Others who see the challenge and are willing to donate for the cause can submit any amount they want with the hope that the added funds will persuade someone to come along and take on the challenge. Hopefully the challenge will be met and it becomes a win-win situation for both the donors and the person/team that completed the challenge. The donors get 'Program X' running on 'Operating System Y' and those who completed the challenge get paid. Finally a good way for a Open Source programmer make some cash for their efforts.
C U!
Mario Valente
Well, I hope that Sourceforge can handle the big burst of new requests for projects to be setup. They're gonna be busy for a while separating the rare wheat from all that chaff that's gonna hit them.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I don't think I would mind having non-encumbered, free redistribution, free modification, full source available shareware. If it can still be called that way :)
You should call it Serviceware, since you're essentially supporting the concept of software development as a service instead of a product. Some companies (plug, plug) already release software like that.
Open Source Myth #0: People will donate to your project.
Fact: You will live in poverty.
Guys, I'm sure they'll improve it with time; especially the spreading-the-word-about-it part...
I had emailed Slashdot just a couple of days ago with my own version of this.
I'm glad they are doing it.
Even though his post is somewhat offensive, I quite literally laughed out loud at this. Sorry, no mod poitns.
I donate to a webcomic i read and love, and, given the cash, I would donate to more things that I use and love. Giving me more ways to donate may lead to more donations.
I for one welcome our new donation overlords, seriously though 5% aint bad, but it shouldn't be on top of the paypal fees. =/
S'pose I just want to have my executable and the source code too.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
So you'll save your taxes.
...
Quote from the EFF link in parent post:
"EFF is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, so your donation is 100% tax-deductible in the United States."
So no money to Paypal (good) and no money to George B. (good too).
Spend the saved money from the taxes to Sourceforge
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.