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Restricted Financial Support for Open-Source?
Anonymous Writer asks: "PayPal has become the standard for making donations to Open-Source projects, and in many cases the only way. Out of the 247 countries and territories represented by top-level domains on the Internet, credit cards are available in 128. However, PayPal only accepts credit cards from 45 of these countries, which excludes 83 from using their service. Nearly two-thirds of the countries on the Internet with valid credit card billing services are currently prevented from making donations using PayPal. Even credit cards issued from those 45 accepted countries with billing addresses not among them are excluded, which affects people working overseas and expatriots. If you want to support the Open-Source Software movement but don't live in a PayPal-accepted country, what are your alternatives?"
Report bugs, submit patches, create your own software, and helping people troubleshoot problems in forums are ways to contribute if you live in a country that Pay Pal isn't accepting credit cards from. You can also do this in a country that Pay Pal DOES accept credit cards from, if you're broke.
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OK, if Paypal will not accept your credit card because you are in East Elbonia, cannot you transfer money from your bank account into your Paypal account?
Yes, it might mean giving Paypal access to a bank account - but if you are an Internet user in one of the banned countries, might it not be worth creating an account solely to tie to Paypal?
Yes, it sucks that Paypal is trying to reduce their exposure to fraud and keep their service cheap. But cannot this be worked around?
www.eFax.com are spammers
If there isn't enough money involved to justify a credit card merchant account for the OSS group, then send them money however you'd normally send money to an individual in a foreign nation.
Yeah, that's hard.
But what the hell does it have to do with Open Source? Or geekery in general?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Take some currency, put it in an envelope and mail it. I mean, those Nigerian scammers have some way of getting money out of your bank account. I'm sure it must be easy if you try do it legitimately.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
OK, I use PayPal, but even I see where this could be an example of letting SlashDot do your homework. In 3 months, will PayPal be announcing a new option for funds transfer? Or should I be thinking that the mere mention of Open Source means that Anonymous Writer's curiousity is purely innocent? Because no one on /. would be blinded to rational thought and deeper motives just because of mere mentions of words
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If you aren't in supported country you cannot make a paypal account at all.
For the kind of money that would constitute a significant donation to an open-source project in western civilization, you could train a team of smart teenagers in a third world country into programmers and food, clothe and house them as they create their own damn open source projects. Hell, as Squeak proves, children can be programmers too! High potential children in third world countries are a great area of untapped programmer potential that can only be tapped by open source projects for serious legal reasons.
*is run over by rotten tomatoes*
I have been hitted hard by PayPal's decision not to send cheques to my country, which is an EU member.
I plan to use MoneyBookers instead. I have communicated with their support department for a small problem and my experience was very positive, they seem to care about their customers and they offer very good support.
Another alternative is iKobo which gives you an ATM card to withdraw money from your account.
"If you want to support the Open-Source Software movement but don't live in a PayPal-accepted country, what are your alternatives?"
You could always start your own business to accept payments in the non-Paypal accepted countries.
You need a CC to sign up and then you can link your bank account. They centre their business on you having a CC that they can query for extended information. Those countries that have CC's but are not supported probably don't supply the information paypal thinks it needs to operate. They basically need access to pre-auth requests... which some places don't provide yet or their CC gateway doesn't support yet.
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Down for almost a week now.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's the de-facto money manager on internet, yet the're not regulated as a bank, and they just won't accept most of the world as worth considering.
I'm a software developer, and since getting full down into open source, i have a BIG software repository to use. and when i get paid for my work, i'd like to set apart some 5-7% and donate it to those OSS projects i've benefited from... but most of them (especially the smaller ones) only have PayPal. so, i can't contribute monetarily.
of course, i do it the other way, with bug reports and suggestions. sometimes a bit of code. but i know how important is to get money now and then!
sometimes, i just click on a few of their ads; hoping they'll get some click points.
-Kz-
> If you want to support the Open-Source Software
> movement but don't live in a PayPal-accepted
> country, what are your alternatives?"
Pick a developer (preferably not a big-name one) and mail him a check or money order.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Paypal hasn't "banned" any country. They started out as a U.S.-only operation and have been grandually adding other countries to their system. Given the complexities of international financial transfers, it's hardly suprising that they haven't yet covered the entire planet.
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/help/how -we-know.html
Though the recipients need to have a US CC, the donators just need to have Amazon accounts and some way of making payments.
Not perfect, but may cover some of the people that paypal doesn't. Just be sure to read the docs.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Just stick to the damn question, people...
...
Oh, wait, I must be new here. Or not. Or... argh !
Anyway, a short (? yeah right...) recap for the ADHD-like attention span posters.
PayPal *IS* the most frequently used "online money transaction" tool: pretty easy to use, damn convenient too most of the time, (barely) acceptable service cost (for small sums), etc.
Because of that, most people that *CAN* use it will use it, and tend to forget other alternatives IF their main purpose ISN'T cashing in massively (for instance, a sourceforge project team with a donate link... as opposed to, let's say, a MMOG with a bazilion customers).
THE PROBLEM starts when you find somebody that only has a PayPal-donate link, you wish to donate a *small* amount of money to them BUT you're unable to use PayPal to donate (not a resident of one of those 45 "supported" countries).
THE BOTTOM LINE / QUESTION ? Let's rephrase it, so people will understand the gist of it: does ANYBODY know of anything PayPal-like (i.e. being able to pay relatively small amounts of cash to somebody else without leaving from the computer) that works on a more... "global" scale ?
Dang, now that I start thinking about it, you'd have a pretty hard time doing something like this "the easy way". However, there's a small (possible) workaround here, but it would require the cooperation of several telephony companies... I mean, heck, the pr0n-sites have some of the most innovative ways (easy ones too) to separate you from your money while giving you what you want almost instantly. The next logical step of PayPal would be to start using some relay-billing services in cooperation with the phone companies, so that you won't require a credit card at all to authorise a "deposit" to your PayPal account.
The answer to the initial question is, anyway, pretty easy: there is NO EASY way right now, but it might be in the future.
I have no ideea how much of it is wishfull thinking, but I certainly hope some other company TOO, and not only PayPal manages to reach "this level" - there's a thing or two to be said about competition and the obvious advantage for the customer...
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
If you're a girl, the following steps may not change the world, but they WILL make a lonely, starving open-source coder happy:
1. Locate an open-source coder.
2. Approach said coder's dorm room or apartment in a trenchcoat (naked underneath), with a six-pack in one hand and a bag of Chinese food in the other.
3. When the coder opens the door, announce "I noticed you checked my bug-fix into CVS this afternoon! Let's celebrate!" Lean back so the trenchcoat opens up, and hold up the beer and Chinese food.
4. Be ready to administer CPR if the coder has a heart attack.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
But it can be done.
Just don't send money, send a gift...Send them a copy of Windows XP.
...::----::...
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You can't even sign up for a Paypal account without a credit card. This,
incidentally, impacts people in the US too, if we don't have a credit card
or, possibly due to having done a Google search on Paypal first and turned
up a hillion jillion horror stories, are unwilling to give Paypal access to
our full line of credit. I'm in the former category: I'm one of those
curmudgeons who refuses to have a credit card. There are a plethora of
reasons for this: I receive more junk mail from the credit card industry
than all other industries combined, for one thing, and so I'm not willing
to support them. Additionally, I view credit cards as a fundamentally bad
idea, because they make it very convenient and easy to spend money you
obviously cannot afford to spend, because you don't have it. I've seen
entirely too many people get a credit card "for emergencies" and three or
four years later be so deep in debt they will probably never regain their
financial independence. For every person with the personal discipline and
self-control to keep the thing paid off, there are nine people who can't,
and so they ruin their lives. As far as I'm concerned, credit cards
*create* emergencies.
(This is quite similar in principle to the recreational use of addictive
substances; theoretically, you can safely use safe amounts of them at home
on weekends, but in practice you get addicted and ruin your life.)
Then there are the userous interest rates that credit cards charge (rates
that IMO ought not even to be legal) and the desceptive tactics they use.
Just the other day I saw a credit card advertisement touting a 0% fixed APR
for the first twelve billing cycles and a 9.something% APR after that, but
the fine print said that the APRs are not guaranteed, that fixed APRs may
become variable, and so forth, completely nullifying the large, bold-faced
wording. For practical purposes, that's false advertising. I'm not
interested in doing business with any company that pulls that sort of
schenanighan. They can stick their card into a choice bodily orifice:
I don't want one, now or ever.
It does bother me that so many OSS projects use Paypal and/or credit cards
as their primary system for receiving donations. Paypal is IMO a very poor
choice, and credit cards are little better. At minimum, they should accept
personal checks. You can't even buy Firefox on a CD at the Mozilla store
without owning a major credit card.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
You could have a wishlist over at the friendly one-click creating Amazon?
I've had one for a few years to support some of my work.
Occaisionally I receive something and it's a nice bonus to actually getting something done.
Of course it doesn't work out so well when your code gets added to Linux distributions and nobody gets it from your website directly anymore - that was the thing that I noticed which made the initial donations tail off.
Still I do earn a little bit every now and again doing remote support / remote sysadmin work always getting paid by DVDs etc. It's much easier to handle than having to worry about currency conversion etc.
It's also a good way of having a small payment in advance, or at particular milestones - something like "Six films from the list, one in advance then one a week until the job is complete".
Won't someone please think of the Cygwin?
How about Egold. They've been around about as long as paypal.
http://www.e-gold.com/
Let the developer know that you appreciate their work. Tell them what you like about the program and what you are using it for.
Some people don't want/expect monetary compensation for their development work. I personally like knowing that someone has found a program useful.
(Food/beer is always good too)
Additionally, I view credit cards as a fundamentally bad idea, because they make it very convenient and easy to spend money you obviously cannot afford to spend, because you don't have it.
This is a point with which I completely agree but is entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
Although I have no credit cards and never have, I can happily use the credit card network. How? I have a charge card, an American Express card: you must pay it in full every month. I also have a debit card, where the money comes directly from a checking account (in which I keep limited funds to reduce risk).
It does bother me that so many OSS projects use Paypal and/or credit cards as their primary system for receiving donations. [...] At minimum, they should accept personal checks.
You're missing the open-source spirit here. Telling a bunch of people what they should do is what you do with people who work for you, like the people you buy stuff from. In the open-source ethic, if you think the world should be different, you step up and change it.
The reason that most on-line entities don't take checks is that they're a pain in the ass to deal with and not many people want to use them. If you'd like to change that, then set up a service for OSS projects where you receive the checks and handle the hassle and then send them the money via PayPal or wire transfer.
If you want to support the Open-Source Software movement but don't live in a PayPal-accepted country, what are your alternatives?
For me as an OSS developer, none. Micropayments were forbidden by law here in Czech Republic several years ago, killing lot of fresh internet companies. Banks would not give away their monopolies easily: every money transaction from abroad would cost me at least 50USD deducted from my account, no matter what the sender pays to his bank for the transaction. So, it is cheaper for me to code for free.
There you are, staring at me again.