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Not happy about this post. Instead of asking to stop, they should do just what they suggest, without further ado - distribute the income to the ecosystem devs t
by poisonborz 2y ago
Not happy about this post. Instead of asking to stop, they should do just what they suggest, without further ado - distribute the income to the ecosystem devs the way they see fit. Make it transparent, make application to these funds posssible, make feature bounties, write it besides the donation button.
Once someone stops donating, it is unlikely they will put up the effort of continually researching on which client/dev to support. This would be much better handled by Jellyfin maintainers.
- newsclues 2y agoLove jellyfin but don’t understand some of their choices like abandoning Reddit for a forum with no traffic
- Chris2048 2y agoI understand abandoning reddit in any situation
- specproc 2y agoA dedicated forum, open to read without login, and controlled by the project. They have easy access to all their data, decision-making power on features to support, and it's their call whether or not to allow advertising (they don't) or AI training of their data. Seems like a perfectly good place for it to me.
- geerlingguy 2y agoWe definitely need more forums. And with Discourse being a huge improvement over BB and other forum software from the 90s, it's not hard to set up multiple forum accounts and even tie them to some other login if you want.
- iamacyborg 2y agoReddit isn’t conducive to many types of conversations due to the voting mechanism for posts and comments.
- yard2010 2y agoWhy would they want to use Reddit?
- newsclues 2y agoBecause that is where the users are
- thedreadpirate 2y agoSure. 60k members on r/jellyfin. But if you look at actual activity, comments per post, votes, etc., the forum is now on par with r/jellyfin in its hay day. But now we can pin important posts, guides and walkthroughs, sub-forums to group things together. For example, having Themes be in a separate sub-forum is huge for seeing what your options are. The only thing you can say in favor of reddit is that most people already have a reddit account. Had, in my case. It is convenient in that sense, but reddit is not better than the forum. And reddit stands for everything that Jellyfin is against. With all the practical and principal considerations summed together, ditching reddit was an easy, and the right, choice.
- venson 2y agoThe forum has 10000 users and averages around 30-40 posts a day ... i would not say thats "no traffic"
- newsclues 2y agoHow many were on Reddit? More
- cr3ative 2y agoThat sounds like a lot of work which could lead to people complaining that their money didn’t go where they wanted it to go. This is simpler.
- jenscow 2y agoAnd if they decide to split the donations equally, a few crappy clients would get made, just to get a slice of the pie.
- RealStickman_ 2y agoAnd if they decided to only support official clients, plenty of other people would complain why their favourite third-party client didn't get anything.
- throwaway7ahgb 2y agoIt's almost as if wealth distribution is not a easy thing , even on a simple OSS project.
- darkwater 2y agoIt is not indeed. Also being a politician is not easy: you will be criticized by someone whatever you say or do.
- blowski 2y agoI agree, it would be nice to make it easy to donate, and then the donations are spread to others within the ecosystem. But perhaps they're worried about a ruckus when they choose to make a donation someone doesn't agree with, so they'd need to have a layer of bureaucracy that they don't want to manage.
- greatgib 2y agoI don't think that it is the job of Jellyfish but it would be nice to have a foundation dedicated to do that for all projects. Especially in Europe where you can get a nice tax deduction but only if you do the donation to a well (and complexly) registered non profit
- blowski 2y agoDon't we have that with Patreon, GitHub Sponsors?
- holowoodman 2y agoNo. Tax deduction effectively excludes middlemen if they don't exclusively distribute to tax-deductible purposes. And at least in Germany, the hurdle is high, as is the risk of being retroactively declared non-deductible, after which you need to pay all the retroactive taxes, usually bankrupting your org and even the middle-men.
- sincerely 2y agoIf I donated to a specific project or organization, I would feel seriously deceived if they turned around and donated that money elsewhere. This is the correct move
- eitland 2y agoMozilla is a prime example of this. I think many have donated to Mozilla thinking they were donating to Firefox only to later realize donations never reach Firefox.
- shiroiushi 2y agoI know this adds complexity, but one way to handle this is simply transparency, and another way is to add choice: on the donation web page, give donors a choice if they want their money to possibly be used to fund other, related projects, that might be short on funding, and then list those projects. Funding ffmpeg, for instance, seems fair since it's a dependency. They could also just make a selection matrix on the donation page, allowing people to select allowed recipients, so for instance they could allow the Android client, and disallow the Windows client. The Mozilla case shows why it's bad to not have transparency.
- BizarroLand 2y agoWikipedia is much worse about it. They even brag about the other charities they've redirected our donations to. That signaled the last time I would ever donate to Wikipedia.
- 3836293648 2y agoIt's one thing if you donate to wikipedia and it ends up at some random wikimedia project you've never heard of and a completely different thing if you donate to Jellyfin and it ends up at Jellyfin Android. But as others have said, the hax office might not like it
- swores 2y agoIt may be a bit different, but there's still plenty of potential for people to donate and not be happy that their donation is forwarded to a third party Jellyfin Android if they personally have no interest in the existence of Jellyfin Android. (I also agree with various other reasons in other people's comments, most of all that this lets donors vote with their money on which third party projects that work on top of Jellyfin get the money, rather than Jellyfin having to decide which ones deserve what proportion of spare money.)
- hoten 2y agoThey should probably do both. Make an announcement like this, but add that beyond x years of runway the remaining donations will be funneled to the community projects.
- rtpg 2y agoI mean they say in the post that you should donate to clients right?
- deely3 2y agoNo one read more then the first sentences.
- sbergot 2y agoWhen you accept donations you have to be transparent about how it is going to be used. They cannot change their mind like that.
- swores 2y agoThey can't do it retroactively for already received donations (not ethically at least, I don't think it would be illegal in this situation), but it wouldn't at all be a problem for them to announce "donations from today on will be used in this new way" instead of making the announcement they just made. (I personally think they made the right choice, am just responding to your comment disagreeing that it would be a transparency issue if they changed how things worked moving forwards.)
- amelius 2y ago> distribute the income to the ecosystem devs the way they see fit Except the IRS may step in and spoil the idea ...
- sokoloff 2y agoIf Jellyfin operated as a 501c3 charity, the IRS would have standing to ensure that funds were used in accordance with those requirements. I couldn’t find evidence that they do. If you donate money to me (not a 501c3) because you like something I do and want me to keep doing it, I can do anything (legal) with that money without IRS comment. (However, your donation to me is not deductible to you.)
- vetinari 2y agoBut then you have to tax the donation as your income; after that, you can redistribute and the receiving party has to tax it again... that's what charities are shielded against. By donating directly, there's one income tax layer removed.
- Gormo 2y agoBut if Jellyfin isn't a registered 501(c) charity, then the point is moot.
- bluGill 2y agoThere are many different options to register jellyfin in the US, and many other options to register in other countries. Each as their own set of rules. If Jellyfin isn't registered in any way then the law gets even more complex (if you are registered anywhere other countries will generally recognize that and accept the laws of where you registered apply, but if not registered nobody knows but the lawyers can spend millions fighting it out)
- sokoloff 2y agoIf it's able to be treated as a gift, it is not taxable to the recipient. I an not a tax professional, but I would expect most of what people call "donations" to Jellyfin would be considered gifts by the tax court.
- GTP 2y agoI instead like what they did: they were transparent about their finances and told their supporters that there are others that would benefit more from their support at this time. They were under no obligation of doing this, but it likely felt them like the right thing to do.
- rob74 2y agoYeah, they could have done what e.g. the Wikimedia foundation does (find ways to spend the money and keep asking for more), but they didn't. Saying "we're good, we have all the money we need for the time being" is very refreshing...
- nullfrigid 2y ago> the Wikimedia foundation does (find ways to spend the money and keep asking for more), I remember reading an article about that, how Jimmy Wales was driving super expensive sportscars around and such - it made me pretty much resolve to never donate to them. Ever. Not withstanding the super aggressive please for cash every September or whenever they do it.
- eesmith 2y agoI don't understand your viewpoint. Is it specifically about Wales? Are you really that much against driving? Or against expensive sports cars? Like, David Heinemeier Hansson drives super expensive sportscars - does that mean you don't use anything he works on? I checked the Form 990s back to 2004 at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200049703 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200... . Wales has never received compensation from the Wikimedia Foundation. Is your issue that he makes his personal wealth from some other source, and doesn't transfer enough of it to Wikipedia? If so, do you have the same views for board members of other non-profits?
- nullfrigid 2y ago[dead]
- Chris2048 2y ago> distribute the income to the ecosystem devs the way they see fit It sounds like they have a general policy of "no paid dev". Further, it's possible that part of the motivation is the belief that if they did have it, it might lead to negative consequences (fewer contributions from non paid devs, squabbles over compensation, generally having to manage payouts etc)
- barnabee 2y agoSpending it on other projects is a bad idea: - it'd be distracting, they're open source devs/maintainers not fund managers - it could be divisive and they'd risk taking flak if they get it "wrong" - it creates a class of "approved" clients and related projects I think the Jellyfin team's approach is pretty reasonable. That said, if I was them I'd probably do what the Helix devs do [0] and rather than telling people to stop donating, remind them that donations are a "tip" to the project and shouldn't be assumed to be buying you anything or paying to ramp up development (or marketing or anything else). I really appreciate that stance and their attitude that it's great to have the money and they'll spend it if and when they need it, while also encouraging people to consider donating elsewhere if they want to have a bigger impact. [0] https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/2220 https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/2220
- illegalmemory 2y ago> it'd be distracting, they're open source devs/maintainers not fund managers Exactly this! It is extra responsibility which distracts from the core project.
- holowoodman 2y agoAnd spending on other projects might create tax problems for them, their donors and maybe the other projects...
- djbon2112 2y agoExactly. This is something we've discussed internally a LOT and this is basically my take as to why not to distribute the money elsewhere, with the added #4 of "people who donated to us, donated to us - is it really right to take their money and give it to other projects, even if we think it is?".
- paledot 2y agoYes. I'm not sure what a donation is for, if not for the recipient to spend as they see fit. And this isn't a matter of spending donor money on unrelated but deserving causes - as you say, supporting clients supports the ecosystem. I understand the argument that deciding who gets the money and how much is nontrivial and perhaps better left up to individual donors, but I disagree that it would be dishonest or misappropriating funds if you were to do so.
- benhurmarcel 2y agoSo like Mozilla? Then you got people complaining that they can't donate just to the project they support instead of the others.
- rat9988 2y agoWhat you suggest is closer to fraud to me than the right thing to do. If I donate to a project, it's not for the maintainer to choose to to use the money for something else.
- KnobbleMcKnees 2y ago>Not happy about this post. Instead of asking to stop, they should do just what they suggest, without further ado - distribute the income to the ecosystem devs the way they see fit. Make it transparent, make application to these funds possible, make feature bounties, write it besides the donation button. Additional admin that will lead to more costs in a self-fulfilling cycle. This is a bad idea. People who are donating are already doing so with intent. Trying to gues where their money would be best placed is playing unnecessary financial games. They're a software developer, not a pension fund manager. >Once someone stops donating, it is unlikely they will put up the effort of continually researching on which client/dev to support. This would be much better handled by Jellyfin maintainers. They're already using the client just as they're using Jellyfin, how is this any more effort than what they've put into donating to Jellyfin directly?
- roenxi 2y agoIMO they should probably put their thinking hat on and try to find a way of spending more money. If the community says they want $20,000 spent on some project; then spend it. Buy some ads or something. In theory a project funded by donations is best run at around break even. This is a signal from their supporters that they should be spending more.
- _heimdall 2y agoThat is assuming people are donating money to change the project rather than support the project as it already is. The money doesn't have to be spent just because it's there. Personally I'd be a little annoyed if I donted to a project and the only change they made was to burn the cash on advertising that they otherwise didn't do.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bluGill 2y ago$20000 isn't a useful amount of money. If they are getting $20k/month they can think about hiring a developer to work full time on the project, but at their current donation levels they could hire a developer for maybe 3 weeks before they run dangerously low on money. Remember, Jellyfin is a fork of Emby which was a fork of Plex - both those projects were open source and then went paid. After being burnt twice like that I think it is understandable why many Jellyfin developers have had enough of that and will reject anything that even slightly could be seen as going paid. So while hiring someone might be possible and in the best interest of Jellyfin in a different world, they cannot do that in this world without losing support.
- jck 2y agoEmby was not a fork. Plex server has never been open source.
- TZubiri 2y agomoney and foss greybeards don't mix.
- its-summertime 2y agoFooting the legal costs of making sure that doing such complies with the open collective policies, the policies of the group OC is delegating management to, their prior statements, etc, would easily take up such a small amount, leaving nothing for no one.
- ygjb 2y ago> Instead of asking to stop, they should do just what they suggest, without further ado - distribute the income to the ecosystem devs the way they see fit Probably not. The amount of money they are taking in is very small, and if they start to ramp up revenue, then they actually need to start paying people for non-core work, like lawyers and accountants. Assuming that the money is received in Canada, by an Ontario registered non-profit, then it is really easy to do the accounting work for small dollar amounts (I ran several Manitoba and BC based non-profits previously for conferences and community work). If you start paying people who can't invoice you, then you need to sort out cross-jurisdictional payroll, and if you are making alot of purchases through other services. Comments like this are unhelpful because it assumes that the developer of the project has a desire to run a business (and non-profits are businesses) rather than building and shipping an open source tool that scratches an itch. It's cool to speculate on what could be, but if you think that is the right approach, fork it, run the business transparently, and allocate a portion of revenue to be held in reserve the moment the core team for the project you forked asks for it.
- calibas 2y agoHow do you know he's not already donating the extra? If I was running a popular open-source project, I wouldn't make it public that I've got extra money that I'm giving away. That comes with all sort of complications...
- eYrKEC2 2y agoHis contrarian post got to front page of Hacker news. I think he won. His message to redirect funds to sub-maintainers is being heard.
- satyrnein 2y agoGreat example of how taking people's money leads to new expectations!