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Silly question perhaps, but can't package maintainers include a standard meta-tag or something in their package for Paypal or something? And having some comman

Silly question perhaps, but can't package maintainers include a standard meta-tag or something in their package for Paypal or something? And having some command like "npm donate" that essentially does the same algorithm as tidelift and prints a paypal address for each package. I'd like that better than having yet another middleman siphoning a part of the cashflow.

IshKebab 8y ago
Nice idea, and that isn't even mutually exclusive with an online version. Having this as a website definitely has advantages - you can easily set up a monthly payment, the receiver gets semi-reliable recurring income rather than sporadic one-off donations, you can pay by direct debit. I think the real problem would be what is the meta-tag? There isn't really a standard for "send money to this URL". You could support Paypal I guess, but do they have an API for sending money? And then you're reliant on Paypal which is fairly notorious for just cutting off anything vaguely unusual (like this would be) and keeping the money.
- prepend 8y ago
  Can’t you just sign a crypto wallet address with the gpg key of the contributors as determined by the project? That’s likely the simplest way and doesn’t require PayPal or revealing identities of maintainers. Also works well by nesting encrypting the wallet private with each maintainer so wallet can only be used with all maintainers in agreement. Or establish a smart contract, etc etc. This seems easy to set up. But many won’t pay.
- jrm2k6 8y ago
  I was going to start working on this, but yeah the issue is that the website would still act as a middleman to send the money around. There are a few problems with this: - some use paypal, some use patreon, some use neither so where do you send the money - even if it was either paypal or patreon, they would take their cut which is unfair. - even if organizations/foundations would give their bank account info, you could probably use stripe to send the money to the right place, but not sure. I would be happy to discuss about this by email as I think it is an idea that could be further explored.
JackuB 8y ago
There is thanks https://github.com/feross/thanks https://github.com/feross/thanks - with an open issue to read the URL from package.json https://github.com/feross/thanks/issues/2 https://github.com/feross/thanks/issues/2
hp 8y ago
That exists but it's a different, not-mutually-exclusive thing. The Tidelift Subscription is not a donation tool or money-transfer mechanism, it's a product - produced in collaboration with interested upstream maintainers.

IshKebab 8y ago

Nice idea, and that isn't even mutually exclusive with an online version. Having this as a website definitely has advantages - you can easily set up a monthly payment, the receiver gets semi-reliable recurring income rather than sporadic one-off donations, you can pay by direct debit. I think the real problem would be what is the meta-tag? There isn't really a standard for "send money to this URL". You could support Paypal I guess, but do they have an API for sending money? And then you're reliant on Paypal which is fairly notorious for just cutting off anything vaguely unusual (like this would be) and keeping the money.

prepend 8y ago
Can’t you just sign a crypto wallet address with the gpg key of the contributors as determined by the project? That’s likely the simplest way and doesn’t require PayPal or revealing identities of maintainers. Also works well by nesting encrypting the wallet private with each maintainer so wallet can only be used with all maintainers in agreement. Or establish a smart contract, etc etc. This seems easy to set up. But many won’t pay.
jrm2k6 8y ago
I was going to start working on this, but yeah the issue is that the website would still act as a middleman to send the money around. There are a few problems with this: - some use paypal, some use patreon, some use neither so where do you send the money - even if it was either paypal or patreon, they would take their cut which is unfair. - even if organizations/foundations would give their bank account info, you could probably use stripe to send the money to the right place, but not sure. I would be happy to discuss about this by email as I think it is an idea that could be further explored.

JackuB 8y ago

There is thanks https://github.com/feross/thanks https://github.com/feross/thanks - with an open issue to read the URL from package.json https://github.com/feross/thanks/issues/2 https://github.com/feross/thanks/issues/2

hp 8y ago

That exists but it's a different, not-mutually-exclusive thing. The Tidelift Subscription is not a donation tool or money-transfer mechanism, it's a product - produced in collaboration with interested upstream maintainers.