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The UI imposes a 5% minimum (and 15% default) value for "Tip thanks.dev" under "How much would you like to donate each month?" on https://thanks.dev/settings ht
by Sephr 4y ago
The UI imposes a 5% minimum (and 15% default) value for "Tip thanks.dev" under "How much would you like to donate each month?" on https://thanks.dev/settings https://thanks.dev/settings
This implementation is clearly for-profit. I want to directly tip open source projects using a system that doesn't involve other third parties taking a significant cut.
- armini 4y agoAbsolutely appreciate & respect your perspective. We're passionate about making open source sustainable & understand that there can be multiple ways of achieving this goal. The more ways money is channeled to the community the better...
- pharmakom 4y agoMaybe 5% is the wrong number, but how do you expect the lights to stay on?
- coldtea 4y agoThey could give the ability to sponsor their own service with donations in the exact same way they do it for third party FOSS projects.
- robertlagrant 4y agoThey're trying to solve the problem, not add to it.
- coldtea 4y agoIf their solution is good, it should also be applicable to them
- suddenclarity 4y agoThe difference being that this service has real tangible costs such as card fees for every transaction. That's not really comparable with "it would be nice to be paid for my time" when pushing your code to GitHub. I haven't used the site but it seems reasonable that one solution won't apply to all kinds of projects.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoThey could break out the transactions explicitly. That would help reduce the feeling that they're taking more than their share, if they're not doing that.
- nicbou 4y agoThey could also sing a song, do a little dance and tweet a word of praise for your generosity. At some point the dance isn't worth the peanut.
- coldtea 4y agoWell, if they're there to secure a good chunk of peanuts for themselves, for being the intermediator, many would find this shady and wont want to deal with them. Sorry, someone donating $10,000 to their favorite FOSS doesn't want an intermediator to take in $500 just for making the transaction. Even more so when the actual transaction infrastructure is not going to be their's anyway, but some banks or Stripe or whatever.
- column 4y agohumble bundle suggests a tip and sliders with a 3 part system : what goes to the dev, what goes to charity, what goes to humble bundle. Nothing stops you there to put 100% into one of those and 0% on the others.
- noisy_boy 4y agoThat seems to be different from this article[0]: > Thanks.dev presently supports itself through a voluntary tip percentage that, if more than zero, gets deducted from donation amounts along with a Stripe payment processing fee prior to distribution. I also think they should allow manual addition of projects. E.g. I use Syncthing but that won't be found in my Github/Gitlab scans. I can donate via Github too but would be easier if I can have one place to control all such donations. [0]: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/07/thanksdev_open_source_funding/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/07/thanksdev_open_source...
- armini 4y agoThanks for the feedback & suggestion. This is something we’d love to incorporate in our roadmap.
- aunty_helen 4y agoThe irony of "someone should build something for free" when complaining about a donation system for helping open source projects get paid for their work.
- 411111111111111 4y agoWhy would this be irony? If anything it's irony that they're offering a for profit service to facilitate donations vs adding themselves as a donor recipient on their platform.
- gabereiser 4y agoNo, the idea of having a simple payments system for open source devs to use to get paid for their "free" software should be "free". Let the merit of the software dictate. That's the whole point of open source. To build things freely and openly to make the best possible software that we (humans) can make. We should also expect the same in the tools we rely on to do that work. It's not a hard ask. It's a philosophy of not wanting a corporation to own the keys and profit from others work. Stripe already takes 2.9%+. I don't want someone else taking 10%-30%. Then I have to give the government 30%.
- dewey 4y ago> the idea of having a simple payments system for open source devs A payment system is never simple and if it's more than a standardized "funding.txt" format it will have running costs and someone has to cover these. How much this system should charge is debatable, but it should probably be higher than 0%.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> Let the merit of the software dictate What does this mean? Using this service is letting the merits dictate. It doesn't stop anyone building a competitor.
- rakoo 4y ago> To build things freely and openly to make the best possible software that we (humans) can make. This only works in a system where humans do not need money to live. This is not our system. In a capitalist system, for better or for worse, if you don't own a means of production you must work to get money because you need money to live. We should recognize the value of work, and if it is useful, pay for it. It is only normal in such a system. I wish we were in a commons-based society, that all resources and production would be decided by workers in quantity and distributed based on needs, but that's not our system.
- ivanvanderbyl 4y agoThat seems reasonable to me. I assume they are using stripe for payments, so that's already 2.9% gone to facilitate you giving money to the project.
- armini 4y agoNot to mention hosting costs :) Sponsors have a slider that allows them to adjust their tip from 5% to 100% of their monthly donation. We figured minimum 5% would cover our compute & merchant fees but left it to the community to decide what we should get. We thought this was the most aligned approach with open source. Totally open to other ideas and suggestions though.
- throwaway74567 4y agoI think your approach is reasonable. There will always be comments from people who think everything should be "free" without considering costs. In a perfect world, Stripe and the credit card companies could waive the fees for donations, but that is not the case. Someone has to actually cover those fees.
- tallanvor 4y agoUnder "Why don't the sum of my individual donations total to the amount I've donated?" you list stripe processing fees as #1... So no, if you're taking a minimum of 5%, then any reasonable person is going to assume that you've already deducted the processing fees, not covering them out of that 5%. I don't think you're being open and honest here.
- throwaway74567 4y agoI don't see any dishonesty here. They are in fact covering the fee out of the 5%. That means they are taking less than what "reasonable" persons think in your opinion. The text may be imprecise, but it's a long way from dishonesty. In my opinion dishonesty requires a motive, and I don't see it here. If the 5% did not include fees, it would perhaps be different.
- 4y ago
- fmx 4y agohttps://thanks.dev/faq https://thanks.dev/faq says: What are your fees? Tips at time of donation. You decide. If payment is required to use a service then that payment is not a "tip" - it is a "fee". Anything over the required payment would be a "tip". This FAQ answer implies that the required payment is zero, which, it turns out, is false. There is absolutely nothing wrong with charging a fee for a service, but there is something wrong with lying about it.
- armini 4y agoHow do you suggest we can better word/explain it?
- helpfulclippy 4y ago"We charge a 5% minimum fee on each payment. If you like what we do, you have the option of leaving a tip."
- qwerki 4y agoActioned. Thank you helpfulclippy! :)
- qwerki 4y agoYou're right @fmx. Have now updated the FAQ per helpfulclippy's suggestion. Thanks for pointing this out!
- rekoil 4y ago> There is absolutely nothing wrong with charging a fee for a service Agreed, but percentage-based fees can quickly become an unfairly large part of payments. I love the idea of this project, but I'd prefer there to be a 5% or X dollars minimum, so that if 5% is more than X dollars, then it doesn't force 5% minimum. If I'm donating $500 to 45 projects, then each project on an even split is getting $11, but thanks.dev is getting $25 even though their service isn't actually in use by my app/service. Seems unfair to me.
- jerrygoyal 4y agoTry this perspective: As an open source dev, I don't mind taking them 5% of the donation I recieve from their platform.
- eliaspro 4y agoFor every OpenSource project I donate to, I check, whether they provide a SEPA IBAN, then I just set up a monthly transfer of a small amount that I can afford instead of a bigger single donation. Whenever possible, I try to avoid any instances in-between which take some % of the cake.
- sli 4y agoThe service also completely blocks VPN users with a 403. That seems like blocking a pretty good chunk of your target audience to me. I will absolutely be looking elsewhere to support projects I benefit from.
- armini 4y agoWe don’t intentionally block anyone but we’re looking to see what could be the problem. Thanks for letting us know.
- tallanvor 4y agoJumping on the top comment, something bothers me about this thread. I'm seeing comments from two separate accounts, but when you look at their about, they seem to be the same person: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qwerki https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qwerki https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=armini https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=armini
- armini 4y agoMy Name is Armin Nehzat (aka armini), my brother is Ali Nehzat (aka qwerki). Feel free to also look us up on linkedin if that helps. Here's a podcast of my brother talking about how he started the project https://podcast.sustainoss.org/148 https://podcast.sustainoss.org/148
- mfts0 4y agoDonations are not a perfect mechanism, there's significant friction. tea.xyz will not have fees once it goes live with its funding protocol for open-source software.
- acomjean 4y agoThere is some overhead in collecting money. When you use a charge card a small percentage goes to the credit card and processing companies. There are some gas stations in Massachusetts that have a slightly lower cash price because they don’t have to pay that fees and pass along the savings. Most businesses nowadays just fold that fee into the price. If they are upfront about how much I’m ok with it. Otherwise you can send a check, but no one is using that option.
- a_c 4y agoCame across this platform before that takes no commission and depend solely on donation. https://en.liberapay.com/ https://en.liberapay.com/ The platform itself is also a project on the platform, where the donation happens https://en.liberapay.com/Liberapay https://en.liberapay.com/Liberapay
- zamalek 4y agoLp is refreshingly absent of bullshit. It's a very simple website that does donations, and donations well. GitHub sponsors isn't too bad, they take a 3% cut (and the CC takes another 3%). But you're effectively donating to Microsoft, which feels icky.