6 ms·

You might want to consider how much the people who are (not) paid to maintain them make.

l0b0 5y ago
That's a cheap barb. First, I maintain a bunch of (small, to be fair) FOSS projects, mostly with zero payment over many years. Second, I've supported several projects with actual money. Third, if I can't reach anyone at the project, how am I supposed to support them with time or money?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  That's irrelevant. Just like how nobody should have expectations from you, we can't have them from anyone who donated her free time once upon a time.
  - yebyen 5y ago
    It's not irrelevant. When a community project depends on another project, it depends on it, (both factually and tautologically.) If the original maintainer evaporates, the community project needs to adapt by either moving somewhere else or forking away and adopting the project. Else the community is in a broken state, all other expectations aside! That's not to say the original author owes any debt to the community, but when pay is the only motivation you wind up with chronically broken communities optimized for rent extraction. (And I'm definitely not saying that OSS authors shouldn't be paid either...) authors can walk away from their creations, but it doesn't make the result of doing that without any concern any less important or relevant here. You're not really suggesting that OP's concerns are somehow irrelevant because code owners need to be protected from bad actors by annoying/bugged-out or broken gatekeeping robots, are you?
3np 5y ago
If only they provided a way to give them money without doxxing myself. If I have to register a Paypal/Stripe account or otherwise give a third-party sensitive information, it's a no-go. There are several times when I've started the process of donating, only to abort because whatever payment processor they use blanket-403 Tor. GH Sponsors works great when you're sponsoring as a company; I can't use it as an individual. An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address (and potentionally ETH if the recipient is willing to deal with the potential managerial overhead of that).
- maccard 5y ago
  > An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address The barrier of stripe or paypal (neither of which require accounts for payment) is _far_ far lower than the barrier of going and fetching some bitcoin.
  - 3np 5y ago
    The barrier is still close-to-0 to accept donations - the recipient doesn’t need any existing cryptocurrency in order to generate a wallet and start accepting funds. That aside... Maybe for you, not for me. PayPal and Stripe do require accounts, nondeterministically based on various factors like IP address. For example, I can not use PayPal from my residential IP. Several attempts to address this via phone and email yielded nothing but frustration and lost hours. Not to mention that both are subject to US sanctions laws and thereby legally prohibited from serving individuals and entities who happen to be in or from “the wrong countries”.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      Having a wallet that can be sent bitcoin doesn't really qualify as "accepting donations" unless you have a way to convert that bitcoin in usable fiat. Thus the barrier is definitely not "close-to-0", especially once you consider potential tax reporting implications.
      - 3np 5y ago
        Besides that I disagree with that "easily converting to fiat" is a disqualifier, read on: Assuming that you as recipient don't mind centralized finance and are just interested in getting out fiat: Open account at e.g. Coinbase. Send in crypto. Convert to fiat (e.g. USD). Wire everything to your account. Report the amount you cashed out as if you had received the corresponding amount in fiat directly. This can be done later, or ahead of time. Alternatively, if you really want the full legacy finance experience a la paypal, you can set up an account that auto-converts it to e.g. USD and sends it straight to your account. For you as a recipient, this is pretty much the same experience you would get from say a normal cc provider. IMO it's preferable that individuals control their own keys but to each their own. Yes, this setup doesn't give you as a recipients all the benefits of the crypto-economy - except that you can now receive funds from it, and provide those benefits to your donors.
blueflow 5y ago
Consequential would be not using these projects, or adopting them if you need to use them.

l0b0 5y ago

That's a cheap barb. First, I maintain a bunch of (small, to be fair) FOSS projects, mostly with zero payment over many years. Second, I've supported several projects with actual money. Third, if I can't reach anyone at the project, how am I supposed to support them with time or money?

cblconfederate 5y ago
That's irrelevant. Just like how nobody should have expectations from you, we can't have them from anyone who donated her free time once upon a time.
- yebyen 5y ago
  It's not irrelevant. When a community project depends on another project, it depends on it, (both factually and tautologically.) If the original maintainer evaporates, the community project needs to adapt by either moving somewhere else or forking away and adopting the project. Else the community is in a broken state, all other expectations aside! That's not to say the original author owes any debt to the community, but when pay is the only motivation you wind up with chronically broken communities optimized for rent extraction. (And I'm definitely not saying that OSS authors shouldn't be paid either...) authors can walk away from their creations, but it doesn't make the result of doing that without any concern any less important or relevant here. You're not really suggesting that OP's concerns are somehow irrelevant because code owners need to be protected from bad actors by annoying/bugged-out or broken gatekeeping robots, are you?

3np 5y ago

If only they provided a way to give them money without doxxing myself. If I have to register a Paypal/Stripe account or otherwise give a third-party sensitive information, it's a no-go. There are several times when I've started the process of donating, only to abort because whatever payment processor they use blanket-403 Tor. GH Sponsors works great when you're sponsoring as a company; I can't use it as an individual. An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address (and potentionally ETH if the recipient is willing to deal with the potential managerial overhead of that).

maccard 5y ago
> An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address The barrier of stripe or paypal (neither of which require accounts for payment) is _far_ far lower than the barrier of going and fetching some bitcoin.
- 3np 5y ago
  The barrier is still close-to-0 to accept donations - the recipient doesn’t need any existing cryptocurrency in order to generate a wallet and start accepting funds. That aside... Maybe for you, not for me. PayPal and Stripe do require accounts, nondeterministically based on various factors like IP address. For example, I can not use PayPal from my residential IP. Several attempts to address this via phone and email yielded nothing but frustration and lost hours. Not to mention that both are subject to US sanctions laws and thereby legally prohibited from serving individuals and entities who happen to be in or from “the wrong countries”.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Having a wallet that can be sent bitcoin doesn't really qualify as "accepting donations" unless you have a way to convert that bitcoin in usable fiat. Thus the barrier is definitely not "close-to-0", especially once you consider potential tax reporting implications.
    - 3np 5y ago
      Besides that I disagree with that "easily converting to fiat" is a disqualifier, read on: Assuming that you as recipient don't mind centralized finance and are just interested in getting out fiat: Open account at e.g. Coinbase. Send in crypto. Convert to fiat (e.g. USD). Wire everything to your account. Report the amount you cashed out as if you had received the corresponding amount in fiat directly. This can be done later, or ahead of time. Alternatively, if you really want the full legacy finance experience a la paypal, you can set up an account that auto-converts it to e.g. USD and sends it straight to your account. For you as a recipient, this is pretty much the same experience you would get from say a normal cc provider. IMO it's preferable that individuals control their own keys but to each their own. Yes, this setup doesn't give you as a recipients all the benefits of the crypto-economy - except that you can now receive funds from it, and provide those benefits to your donors.

blueflow 5y ago

Consequential would be not using these projects, or adopting them if you need to use them.